SHORT STUDIES 



GREAT SUBJECTS 



SECOND SERIES. 



SHORT STUDIES ^^^"^^^ 



GREAT SUBJECTS 



JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M.A. 

I^TE FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFOBD. 



SECOND SERIES. 



NEW YORK: 

CHARLES SCRIBNER AND COMPANY, 

1872. 







0. \i^:^o 



PREFACE. 



All the Essays in this volume have already been pub- 
lished. Two were read at St. Andrew's before the students 
of the University. One was delivered before a scientific 
society at Plymouth. The paper on the Eastern Question 
appeared in the "Westminster Review" in October, 1857. 
The rest have been contributed at various times during the 
last four years, to " Eraser's Magazine." 

J. A. F. 

May 1, 1871. 



CONTENTS. 

— f— 

PAGE 

Calvinism 9 

A Bishop of the Twelfth Century 54 

Father Newman on " The Grammar of Assent " . . .86 
Condition and Prospects of Protestantism . . . .122 

'England and her Colonies 149 

A Fortnight in Kerry. Part. 1 178 

'Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject . . . .211 

•The Merchant AND his Wife 242 

On Progress 245 

•The Colonies once more 280 

Education 313 

jy Fortnight in Kerry. Part II 344 

' England's War 382 

The Eastern Question 410 

Scientific Method applied to History . . . 445 



CALVINISM : 

AN ADDRESS TO THE STUDENTS AT ST. ANDREW'S, 
March 17, 1871. 



Religious men, it is sometimes said, express themselves , 
/ in all moods and all tenses except the present indicative. 
They tell us of things that were done in ancient times. 
They tell us of things which will be hereafter, or which 
might or would have been under certain conditions. O. 
the actual outward dispensation under which we live at pres- 
ent, we hear very little. The facts of experience are not 
sufficiently in harmony with the theories of different relig- 
ious bodies to allow any sect or set of believers to appeal to 
them with confidence. The age of miracles is past. The 
world is supposed to go its own way, undisturbed by provi- 
dential interferences, waiting for some final account to be 
taken with it hereafter ; while the relations of the Creator 
with his creatures are confined to special and invisible proc- 
esses by which individual souls are saved from perdition. 

Acknowledgments of this kind are no more than a tacit 
confession of the inadequacy of our several opinions to ex- 
plain the phenomena of our lives. Results which are unap- 
parent may be unexistent except in imagination. There is 
no reason to believe that the methods by which the laws of 
physical nature have been discovered should be inapplica- 
ble in matters of larger moment, or that the observation of 
facts by which alone we arrive at scientific conclusions 
should lead us wrong, or should lead to nothing when we / 
interrogate them on our moral condition. Piety, like wis- 
dom, consists in the discovery of the rules under which we 
are actually placed, and in faithfully obeying them. Fidel- 
ity and insight in the one case are as likely to find their 



10 Calvinism, 

reward as in the other ; infidelity and blindness as likely 
to be answered by failure; and, in other ages, systems of 
religion have been vigorous and effective precisely to the 
extent to which they have seen in the existing order of 
things the hand of a living ruler. 

I may say at once that I am about to travel over serious 
ground. I shall not trespass on theology, though I must 
go near the frontiers of it. I shall give you the conclusions 
which I have been led to form upon a series of spiritual 
phenomena which have appeared successively in different 
ages of the world, — which have exercised the most re- 
markable influence on the character and history of man- 
kind, and have left their traces nowhere more distinctly 
than in this Scotland where we now stand. 

Every one here present must have become familiar in 
late years with the change of tone throughout Europe and 
America on the subject of Calvinism. After being ac- 
cepted for two centuries in all Protestant countries as the 
final account of the relations between man and his Maker, 
it has come to be regarded by liberal thinkers as a system 
of belief incredible in itself, dishonoring to its object, and as 
intolerable as it has been itself intolerant. The Catholics 
whom it overthrew take courage from the philosophers, and 
assail it on the same ground. To represent man as sent 
into the world under a ctirse, as incurably wicked, — wicked 
by the constitution of his flesh, and wicked by eternal de- 
cree, — as doomed, unless exempted by special grace which 
he cannot merit, or by any effort of his own obtain, to live 
in sin while he remains on earth, and to be eternally miser- 
able when he leaves it, — to represent him as born unable 
to keep the commandments, yet as justly liable to everlast- 
ing punishment for breaking them, is alike repugnant to 
reason and to conscience, and turns existence into a hideous 
nightmare. To deny the freedom of the will is to make 
morality impossible. To tell men that they cannot help 
themselves is to fling them into recklessness and despair. 
1o what purpose the effort to be virtuous when it is an 



Caluinisin, 11 

effort which is foredoomed to fail, — when those that are 
riaved are saved by no effort of their own, and confess them- 
selves the worst of sinners, even when rescued from the 
penalties of sin ; and those that are lost are lost by an ever- 
lasting sentence decreed against them before they were 
born ? How are we to call the Ruler who laid us under 
this iron code by the name of Wise, or Just, or Merciful, 
when we ascribe principles of action to Him which in a hu- 
man father we should call preposterous and monstrous ? 

The discussion of these strange questions has been pur- 
sued at all times with inevitable passion, and the crisis 
uniformly has been a drawn battle. The Arminian has 
entangled the Calvinist, the Calvinist has entangled the Ar- 
minian, in a labyrinth of contradictions. The advocate of 
free will appeals to conscience and instinct, — to an a priori 
sense of what ought in equity to be. The necessitarian 
falls back upon the experienced reality of facts. It is true,^x^ 
and no argument can gainsay it, that men are placed in the 
world unequally favored, both in inward disposition and out- 
ward circumstances. Some children are born with tempera- ' 
ments which make a life of innocence and purity natural and 
easy to them ; others are born with violent passions, or even 
with distinct tendencies to evil, inherited from their ances- 
tors, and seemingly unconquerable, — some are constitu- 
tionally brave, others are constitutionally cowards, — some 
are born in religious families, and are carefully educated 
and watched over ; others draw their first breath in an at- 
mosphere of crime, and cease to inhale it only when they 
pass into their graves. Only a fourth part of mankind are 
born Christians. The remainder never hear the name of 
Christ except as a reproach. The Chinese and the Japanese 
— we may almost say every weaker race with whom we have 
come in contact — connect it only with the forced intrusion 
of stranorers whose behavior among them has served ill to 
recommend their creed. These are facts which no casuistry 
can explain away. And if we believe at all that the world 
is governed by a conscious and intelligent Being, we must 



12 Calvinism. 

' believe also, however we can reconcile it with our own 
^ ideas, that these anomalies have not arisen by accident, but 
ha re been ordered of purpose and design. 

No less noticeable is it that the materialistic and the met- 
aphysical philosophers deny as completely as Calvinism 
what is popularly called Free Will. Every effect has its 
cause. In every action the will is determined by the mo- 
tive which at the moment is o^^erating most powerfully 
upon it. When we do wrong, we are led away by temp- 
tation. If we overcome our temptation, we overcome it 
either because we foresee inconvenient consequences, and 
the certainty of future pains is stronger than the present 
pleasure ; or else because we prefer right to wrong, and 
our desire for good is greater than our desire for indul- 
gence. It is impossible to conceive a man, when two 
courses are open to him, choosing that which he least de- 
sires. He may say that he can do what he dislikes because 
it is his duty. Precisely so. His desire to do his duty is 
a stronger motive with him than the attraction of present 
pleasure. 

Spinoza, from entirely different premises, came to the 
same conclusion as Mr. Mill or Mr. Buckle, and can find no 
better account of the situation of man than in the illustra- 
tion of St. Paul, " Hath not the potter power over the clay, 
to make one vessel to honor and another to dishonor ? " 

If Arminianism most commends itself to our feelings, 
Calvinism is nearer to the facts, however harsh and forbid- 
ding those facts may seem. 

I have no intention, however, of entangling myself or 
you in these controversies. As little shall I consider 
whether men have done wisely in attempting a doctrinal 
solution of problems, the conditions of which are so imper- 
fectly known. The moral system of the universe is like a 
document written in alternate ciphers, which change from 
line to line. We read a sentence, but at the next our key 
fails us ; we see that there is something written there, but 



Calvinism. 13 

if we guess at it we are guessing lu the dark. It seems 
more faithful, more becoming, in beings such as we are, to 
rest in the conviction of om- own inadequacy, and conline 
ourselves to those moral rules for our lives and actions on 
which, so far as they concern ourselves, we are left in no 
uncertainty at all. 

At present, at any rate, we are concerned with an aspect 
of the matter entirely different. I am going to ask you to 
consider how it came to pass that if Calvinism is indeed the 
hard and unreasonable creed which modern enlightenment 
declares it to be, it has possessed such singular attractions 
in past times for some of the greatest men that ever lived ; 
and how — being, as we are told, fatal to morality, because 
it denies free will — the first symptom of its operation, 
wherever it established itself, was to obliterate the distinc- 
tion between sins and crimes, and to make the moral law 
the rule of life for States as well as persons. I shall ask 
you, again, why, if it be a creed of intellectual servitude, 
it was able to inspire and sustain the bravest efforts ever 
made by man to break the yoke of unjust authority. When 
all else has failed, — when patriotism has covered its face, 
and human courage has broken down, — when intellect has 
yielded, as Gibbon says, " with a smile or a sigh," content 
to philosophize in the closet, and abroad worship with the 
vulgar, — when emotion, and sentiment, and tender imagi- 
native piety have become the handmaids of superstition, 
and have dreamt themselves into forgetfulness that there is 
any difference between lies and truth, — the slavish form of 
belief called Calvinism, in one or other of its many forms, 
has borne ever an inflexible front to illusion and mendacity, 
and has preferred rather to be ground to powder like flint 
than to bend before violence or melt under enervating temp- 
tation. 

It is enough to mention the name of William the Silent, 
of Luther, — for on the points of which I am speaking 
Luther was one with Calvin, — of your own Knox and 



14 Calvinism. 

Andrew Melville and the Regent Murray, of Coligny, of our 
English Cromwell, of JVIilton, of John Bunyan. These 
were men possessed of all the qualities which give nobility 
and grandeur to human nature, — men whose life was as 
upright as their intellect was commanding and their public 
aims untainted with selfishness ; unalterably just where 
duty required them to be stern, but with the tenderness of a 
woman in their hearts ; frank, true, cheerful, humorous, as 
unlike sour fanatics as it is possible to imagine any one, and 
able in some way to sound the key-note to which every brave 
and faithful heart in Europe instinctively vibrated. 

This is the problem. Grapes do not grow on bramble- 
bushes. Illustrious natures do not form themselves upon 
narrow and cruel theories. Spiritual life is full of apparent 
paradoxes. When St. Patrick preached the Gospel on 
Tarah Hill to Leoghaire, the Irish king, the Druids and the 
wise men of Ireland shook their heads. " Why," asked the 
king, " does what the cleric preaches seem so dangerous to 
you ? " " Because," was the remarkable answer, " because 
he preaches repentance, and the law of repentance is such 
that a man shall say, ' I may commit a thousand crimes, and 
if I repent I shall be forgiven, and it will be no worse with 
me : therefore I will continue to sin.' " The Druids ar- 
gued logically, but they drew a false inference notwithstand- 
ing. The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its 
soundness. Where we find a heroic life appearing as the 
uniform fruit of a particular mode of opinion, it is childish 
to argue in the face of fact that the result ought to have 
been different. 

The question which I have proposed, however, admits of 
a reasonable answer. I must ask you only to accompany 
me on a somewhat wide circuit in search of it. 

There seems, in the first place, to lie in all men, in pro- 
portion to the strength of their understanding, a conviction 
that there is in all human things a real order and purpose, 
notwithstanding the chaos in which at times they seem to be 



Calvirmm. 15 

involved. Suffering scattered blindly without remedial pur- 
pose or retributive propriety, — good and evil distributed 
with the most absolute disregard of moral merit or demerit, 
— enormous crimes perpetrated with impunity, or vengeance 
when it comes falling not on the guilty, but the innocent, — 

" Desert a beggar born, 
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity," — 

these phenomena present, generation after generation, the 
same perplexing and even maddening features ; and with- 
out an illogical, but none the less a positive certainty that 
things are not as they seem, — that, in spite of appearance, 
there is justice at the heart of them, and that, in the work- 
ing out of the vast drama, justice will assert somehow and 
somewhere its sovereign right and power, the better sort of 
persons would find existence altogether unendurable. Tliis 
is what the Greeks meant by the 'AvdyKr) or destiny, which 
at the bottom is no other than moral Providence. Prome- 
theus chained on the rock is th« counterpart of Job on his 
dunghill. Torn with unrelaxing agony, the vulture with 
beak and talons rending at his heart, the Titan still defies 
the tyrant at whose command he suffers, and, strong in con- 
scious innocence, appeals to the eternal Mtupa which will do 
him right in the end. The Olympian gods were cruel, jeal- 
ous, capricious, malignant ; but beyond and above the 
Olympian gods lay the silent, brooding, everlasting flite of 
which victim and tyrant were alike the instruments, and 
which at last, far off, after ages of misery it might be, but 
still before all was over, would vindicate the sovereignty of 
justice. Full as it may be of contradictions and perplexi- 
ties, this obscure belief lies at the very core of our spiritual 
nature, and it is called fate, or it is called predestination, ac- 
cording as it is regarded pantheistically as a necessary con- 
dition of the universe or as the decree of a self-conscious 
being. 

Intimately connected with this belief, and perhaps tlie 



16 Calvi7iism. 

fact of which it is the inadequate expression, is the existence 
in nature of omnipresent organic laws, penetrating the ma- 
terial world, penetrating the moral world of human life and 
society, which insist on being obeyed in all that we do and 
handle, — which we cannot alter, cannot modify, — which 
will go with us, and assist and befriend us, if we recognize 
and comply with them, — which inexorably make them- 
selves felt in failure and disaster if we neglect or attempt to 
thwart them. Search where we will among created things, 
far as the microscope will allow the eye to pierce, we find 
organization everywdiere. Large forms resolve themselves 
into j^arts, but these parts are but organized out of other 
pai'ts, down so far as we can see into infinity. When the 
plant meets with the conditions which agree with it, it 
thrives ; under unhealthy conditions, it is poisoned and disin- 
tegrates. It is the same precisely with each one of ourselves, 
whether as individuals or as aggregated into associations, 
into families, into nations, into institutions. The remotest 
fibre of human action, from the policy of empires to the 
most insignificant trifie over which we waste an idle hour or 
moment, either moves in harmony with the true law of our 
being, or is else at discord with it. A king or a parliament 
enacts a law, and we imagine we are creating some new 
regulation, to encounter unprecedented circumstances. The 
law itself which api:)lied to these circumstances was enacted 
from eternity. It has its existence independent of us, and 
will enforce itself either to reward or punish, as the attitude 
which we -iwsume lovvards it is wise or unwise. Qui human 
laws are but tne copies, more or less imperfect, of the 
eternal laws so far as we can read them, and either succeed 
and promote our welfare, or fail and bring confusion and 
disaster, according as the legislator's insight has detected tlie 
true principle, or has been distorted by ignorance or self- 
ishness. 

Aiid these laws are absolute, inflexible, irreversible ; the 
steady friends of the wise and good, the eternal enemies of 



Oalvimsm, 17 

the blockhead and the knave. No Pope can dispense with a 
statute enrolled in the Chancery of Heaven, or popular vote 
repeal it. The discipline is a stern one, and many a wild 
endeavor men have made to obtain less hard conditions, or 
imagine them other than they are. They have conceived 
the rule of the Almighty to be like the rule of one of them- 
selves. They have fancied that they could bribe or appease 
Him, — tempt Him by penance or pious offering to suspend 
or turn aside his displeasure. They are asking that his 
own eternal nature shall become other than it is. One thing 
only they can do. They for themselves, by changing their 
own courses, can make the law which they have broken 
thenceforward their friend. Their dispositions and nature 
will revive and become healthy again when they are no 
longer in opposition to the will of their Maker. This is the 
natural action of what we call repentance. But the pen- 
alties of the wrongs of the past remain unrepealed. As men 
have sown they must still reap. The profligate who has 
ruined his health or fortune may learn before he dies that 
he has lived as a fool, and may recover something of his 
peace of mind as he recovers his understanding ; but no 
miracle takes away his paralysis, or gives back to his chil- 
dren the bread of which he has robbed them. He may 
himself be pardoned, but the consequences of his acts 
remain. 

Once more : and it is the most awful feature of our 
condition. The laws of nature are general, and are no re- 
specters of persons. There has been and there still is a 
clinging impression that the sufferings of men are the results 
of their own particular misdeeds, and that no one is or can 
be punished for the faults of others. I shall not dispute 
about the word " punishment." " The fathers have eaten sour 
grapes," said the Jewish proverb, " and the children's teeth 
are set on edge." So said Jewish experience, and Ezekiel 
answered that these words should no longer be used among 
them. " The soul that sinneth, it shall die. 
2 



18 Calvinism. 

promise that the soul shall be saved, there is do such prom- 
ise for the body. Every man is the architect of his own 
character ; and if to the extent of his opportunities he has 
lived purely, nobly, and uprightly, the misfortunes which 
may fall on him through the crimes or errors of other men 
cannot injure the immortal part of him. But it is no less 
true that we are made dependent one upon another to a 
degree which can hardly be exaggerated. The winds and 
waves are on the side of the best navigator, — the seaman 
who best undei-stands them. Place a fool at the helm, and 
crew and passengers will perish, be they ever so innocent. 
The Tower of Siloam fell, not for any sins of the eighteen 
who were crushed by it, but through bad mortar probably, 
the rotting of a beam, or the uneven setting of the founda- 
tions. The persons who should have suffered, according to 
our notion of distributive justice, were the ignorant archi- 
tects or masons who had done their work amiss. But the 
guilty had perhaps long been turned to dust. And the law 
of gravity brought the tower down at its own time, indiffer- 
ent to the persons who might be under it. 

Now the feature which distinguishes man from other an- 
imals is that he is able to observe and discover these laws 
which are of such mighty moment to him, and direct his 
conduct in conformity with them. The more subtle may 
be revealed only by complicated experience. The plainer 
and more obvious — among those especially which are 
called moral — have been apprehended among the higher 
races easily and readily. I shall not ask how the knowl- 
edge of them has been obtained, whether by external reve- 
lation, or by natural insight, or by some other influence 
working through human faculties. The fact is all that we 
are concerned with, that from the earliest times of which we 
have historical knowledge there have always been men who 
have recognized the distinction between the nobler and baser 
parts of their being. They have perceived that if they 
would be men, and not beasts, they must control their aui- 



Calvinism. 19 

mal passions, prefer truth to falsehood, courage to coward- 
ice, justice to violence, and compassion to cruelty. These 
are the elementary principles of morality, on the recogni- 
tion of which the welfare and improvement of mankind de- 
pend, and human history has been little more than a record 
of the struggle which began at the beginning and will con- 
tinue to the end between the few who have had ability to 
see into the truth and loyalty to obey it, and the multitude 
who by evasion or rebellion have hoped to thrive in spite 
of it. 

Thus we see that in the better sort of men there are two 
elementary convictions ; that there is over all things an un- 
sleeping, inflexible, all-ordering, just power, and that this 
power governs the world by laws which can be seen in their 
effects, and on the obedience to which, and on nothing else, 
human welfare depends. 

And now I will suppose some one whose tendencies are 
naturally healthy, though as yet no special occasion shall 
have roused him to serious thought, growing up in a civil- 
ized community where, as usually happens, a compromise 
has been struck between vice and virtue, where a certain 
difference between right and wrong is recognized decently 
on the surface, while below it one half of the people are 
rushing steadily after the thing called pleasure, and the 
other half laboring in drudgery to provide the means of it 
for the idle. 

Of practical justice in such a community there will be 
exceedingly httle, but as society cannot go along at all 
without paying morality some outward homage, there will 
of course be an established religion, — an Olympus, a Val- 
halla, or some system of a theogony or theology, with tem- 
ples, priests, liturgies, public confessions in one form or 
another of the dependence of the things we see upon what 
is not seen, with certain ideas of duty and penalties imposed 
for neglect of it. These there will be, and also, as obedi- 
ence is disagreeable and requires abstinence from various 



20 Calvinism, 

indulgences, there will be contrivances by which the indul- 
gences can be secured and no harm come of it. By the side 
of the moral law there grows up a law of ceremonial observ- 
ance, to which is attached a notion of superior sanctity and 
especial obligation. Morality, though not at first disowned, 
is slighted as comparatively trivial. Duty in the high sense 
comes to mean religious duty, that is to say, the attentive 
observance of certain forms and ceremonies, and these forms 
and ceremonies come into collision little or not at all with 
ordinary life, and ultimately have a tendency to resolve 
themselves into payments of money. 

Thus rises what is called idolatry. I do not mean by 
idolatry the mere worship of manufactured images. I mean 
the separation between practical obligation, and new moons 
and sabbaths, outward acts of devotion, or formulas of par- 
ticular opinions. It is a state of things perj^etually recur- 
ring ; for there is nothing, if it would only act, more agree- 
able to all parties concerned. Priests find their ofiice 
magnified and their consequence increased. Laymen can be 
in favor with God and man, so priests tell them, while their 
enjoyments or occupations are in no way interfered with. 
The mischief is that the laws of nature remain meanwhile 
unsuspended ; and all the functions of society become poi- 
soned through neglect of them. Religion, which ought to 
have been a restraint, becomes a fresh instrument of evil, — 
to the imaginative and the weak a contemptible superstition, 
to the educated a mockery, to knaves and hypocrites a cloak 
of iniquity, to all alike — to those who suffer and those who 
seem to profit by it — a lie so palpable as to be worse than 
atheism itself. 

There comes a time when all this has to end. The over- 
indulgence of the few is the over-penury of the many. In- 
justice begets misery, and misery resentment. Something 
happens perhaps, — some unusual oppression, or some act 
of religious mendacity especially glaring. Such a person as 
I am supposmg asks himself, " What is the meaning of these 



Calvinism. 21 

things ? " His eyes are opened. Gradually he discovers 
that he is living surrounded with falsehood, drinking lies 
like water, his conscience polluted, his intellect degraded by 
the abominations which envelop his existence. At first per- 
haps he will feel most keenly for himself. He will not sup- 
pose that he can set to rights a world that is out of joint, 
but he will himself relinquish his share in what he detests 
and despises. He withdraws into himself. If what others 
are doing and saying is obviously wrong, then he has to ask 
himself what is right, and what is the true purpose of his 
existence. Light breaks more clearly on him. He becomes 
conscious of impulses towards something purer and higher 
than he has yet experienced or even imagined. Whence 
these impulses come he cannot tell. He is too keenly aware 
of the selfish and cowardly thoughts which rise up to mar 
and thwart his nobler aspirations to believe that they can 
possibly be his own. If he conquers his baser nature, he 
feels that he is conquering himself The conqueror and the 
conquered cannot be the same ; and he therefore concludes, 
not in vanity, but in profound humiliation and self-abase- 
ment, that the infinite grace of God and nothing else is res- 
cuing him from destruction. He is converted, as the theo- 
logians say. He sets his face upon another road from that 
which he has hitherto travelled, and to which he can never 
return. It has been no merit of his own. His disposition 
will rather be to exaggerate his own worthies sness, that he 
may exalt the more what has been done for him, and he 
resolves thenceforward to enlist himself as a soldier on the 
side of truth and right, and to have no wishes, no desires, 
no opinions but what the service of his Master imposes. 
Like a soldier he abandons his freedom, desiring only like 
a soldier to act and speak no longer as of himself, but as 
commissioned from some supreme authority. In such a 
condition a man becomes magnetic. There are epidemics 
of nobleness as well as epidemics of disease ; and he infects 
others with his own enthusiasm. Even in the most corrupt 



22 Calvinism. 

ages there are always more persons than we suppose who m 
their hearts rebel against the prevailing fashions ; one takes 
courage from another, one supports another ; communities 
form themselves with higher principles of action and purer 
intellectual beliefs. As their numbers multiply they catch 
fire with a common idea and a common indignation, and 
ultimately burst out into open war with the lies and iniqui- 
ties that surround them. 

I have been describing a natural process which has re- 
peated itself many times in human history, and, unless the 
old opinion that we are more than animated clay, and that 
our nature has nobler affinities, dies away into a dream, 
will repeat itself at recurring intervals, so long as our race 
survives upon the planet. 

I have told you generally what I conceive to be our real 
position, and the administration under which we live ; and 
I have indicated how naturally the conviction of the truth 
would tend to express itself in the moral formulas of Cal- 
vinism. I will now run briefly over the most remarkable 
of the great historical movements to which I have alluded ; 
and you will see, in the striking recurrence of the same pe- 
culiar mode of thought and action, an evidence that, if not 
completely accurate, it must possess some near and close 
affinity with the real fact. I will take first the example with 
which we are all most familiar, — that of the chosen people. 
I must again remind you that I am not talking of theology. 
I say nothing of what is called technically revelation. I am 
treating these matters as phenomena of human experience, 
the lessons of which would be identically the same if no 
revelation existed. 

The discovery of the key to the hieroglyphics, the exca- 
vations in the tombs, the investigations carried on by a 
series of careful inquirers, from Belzoni to Lepsius, into 
the antiquities of the Valley of the Nile, interpreting and in 
turn interpreted by Manetho and Herodotus, have thrown 
a light in many respects singularly clear upon the condition 



Calvinism, 23 

of the first country which, so far as history can tell, suc- 
ceeded in achieving a state of high civilization. From a 
period the remoteness of which it is unsafe to conjecture 
there had been established in Egypt an elaborate and splen- 
did empire, which, though it had not escaped revolutions, 
had suffered none which had caused organic changes there. 
It had strength, wealth, power, coherence, a vigorous mon- 
archy, dominant and exclusive castes of nobles and priests, 
and a proletariat of slaves. Its cities, temples, and monu- 
ments are still, in their ruin, the admiration of engineers 
and the despair of architects. Original intellectual concep- 
tions inspired its public buildings. Saved by situation, like 
China, from the intrusion of barbarians, it developed at 
leisure its own ideas, undisturbed from without ; and when 
it becomes historically visible to us, it was in the zenith of 
its glory. The habits of the higher classes were elaborately 
luxurious, and the vanity and the self-indulgence of the few 
were made possible — as it is and always must be where 
vanity and self-indulgence exist — by the oppression and 
misery of the millions. You can see on the sides of the 
tombs — for their pride and their pomp followed them even 
in their graves — the effeminate patrician of the court of 
the Pharaohs reclining in his gilded gondola, the attendant 
eunuch waiting upon him with the goblet or plate of fruit, 
the bevies of languishing damsels fluttering round him 
in their transparent draperies. Shakespeare's Cleopatra 
might have sat for the portrait of the Potiphar's wife who 
tried the virtue of the son of Jacob : — 

" The barge she sate in, like a burnished throne, 
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold; 
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that 
The winds were love-sick with them. . . . 

For her own person, 
It beggared all description: she did lie 
In her pavilion — cloth-of-gold of tissue — 
O'cr-picturing that Venus where we see 
The fancy out-work nature : on each side her 
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids, 



24 Calvinism. 

With divers-colored fans, whose wind did seem 
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool. 
And what they did, undid." 

By the side of all this there was a no less elaborate relig- 
ion, — an ecclesiastical hierarchy, — powerful as the sacer- 
dotalism of Mediaeval Europe, with a creed in the middle of 
it which was a compHcated idolatry of the physical forces. 
There are at bottom but two possible religions, — that 

/ which rises in the moral nature of man, and which takes 
shape in moral commandments, and that which grows out 
of the observation of the material energies which operate 

vin the external universe. The sun at all times has been 
the central object of this material reverence. The sun was 
the parent of light ; the sun was the lord of the sky and the 
lord of the seasons ; at the sun's bidding the earth brought 
forth her harvests and ripened them to maturity. The sun, 
too, was beneficent to the good and to the evil, and, like the 
laws of political economy, drew no harsh distinctions be- 
tween one person and another. It demanded only that cer- 
tain work should be done, and smiled equally on the crops 
of the slave-driver and the garden of the innocent peasant. 
The moon, when the sun sunk to his night's rest, reigned 
as his vicegerent, the queen of the revolving heavens, and 
in her waxing and waning and singular movement among 
the stars was the perpetual occasion of admiring and ador- 
ing curiosity. Nature in all her forms was wonderful ; 
Nature in her beneficent forms was to be loved and wor- 
shipped ; and being, as Nature is, indifferent to morality, 
bestowing prosperity on principles which make no demands 
on chastity or equity, she is, in one form or other, the 
divinity on whose shrine in all ages the favored sections of 
society have always gladly paid their homage. Where 
Nature is sovereign, there is no need of austerity and self- 
denial. The object of life is the pursuit of wealth and the 
pleasures which wealth can purchase ; and the rules for our 
practical guidance are the laws, as the economists say, by 
which wealth can be acquired. 



Calvinism. 25 

It IS an excellent creed for those who have the happiness 
to profit by it, and will have its followers to the end of time. 
In these later ages it connects itself with the natural sci- 
ences, progress of the intellect, specious shadows of all kinds 
which will not interfere with its supreme management of 
political arrangements. In Egypt, where knowledge was 
in its rudiments, every natural force, the minutest plant or 
animal, which influenced human fortunes for good or evil, 
came in for a niche in the shrine of the temples of the sun 
and moon. Snakes and crocodiles, dogs, cats, cranes, and 
beetles were propitiated by sacrifices, by labored ceremoni- 
als of laudation ; nothing living was too mean to find a 
place in the omnivorous devotionalism of the Egyptian 
clergy. We, in these days, proud as we may be of our intel- 
lectual advances, need not ridicule popular credulity. Even 
here in Scotland, not so long ago, wretched old women 
were supposed to run about the country in the shape of 
hares. At this very hour the ablest of living natural phi- v 
losophers is looking gravely to the courtships of moths and 
butterflies to solve the problem of the origin of man, and 7 
prove his descent from an African baboon. 

There was, however, in ancient Egypt another article of 
faith besides nature-worship of transcendent moment, — a 
belief which had probably descended fi'om earlier and purer 
ages, and had then originated in the minds of sincere and 
earnest men, — as a solution of the real problem of human- 
ity. The inscriptions and paintings in the tombs near 
Thebes make it perfectly clear that the Egyptians looked 
forward to a future state, — to the judgment-bar of Osiris, 
where they would each one day stand to give account for 
their actions. They believed as clearly as we do, and with 
a conviction of a very similar kind, that those who had done 
good would go to everlasting life, and those who had done 
evil into eternal perdition. 

Such a belief, if coupled with an accurate perception of 
what good and evil mean, — with a distinct certainty that 



26 Calvinism. 

men will be tried by the moral law, before a perfectly just 
judge, and that no subterfuges will avail, — cannot but exer- 
cise a most profound and most tremendous influence upon 
human conduct. And yet our own experience, if nothing 
else, proves that this belief, when moulded into traditional 
and conventional shapes, may lose its practical power ; nay, 
without ceasing to be professed, and even sincerely held, 
may become more mischievous than salutary. And this is 
owing to the fatal distinction of which I spoke just now, 
which seems to have an irresistible tendency to shape itself, 
in civilized societies, between religious and moral duties. 
With the help of this distinction it becomes possible for a 
man, as long as he avoids gross sins, to neglect every one 
of his positive obligations, — to be careless, selfish, unscru- 
pulous, indiiFerent to everything but his own pleasures, — 
and to imagine all the time that his condition is perfectly 
satisfactory, and that he can look forward to what is before 
him without the slightest uneasiness. All accounts repre- 
sent the Egyptians as an eminently religious people. No 
profanity was tolerated there, no skepticism, no insolent dis- 
obedience to the established priesthood. If a doubt ever 
crossed the mind of some licentious philosopher as to the 
entire sacredness of the stainless Apis, if ever a question 
forced itself on him whether the Lord of heaven and earth 
could really be incarnated in the stupidest of created beasts, 
he kept his counsels to himself, if he was not shocked at his 
own impiety. The priests, who professed supernatural pow- 
ers, — the priests, who were in communication with the 
gods themselves, — they possessed the keys of the sacred 
mysteries, and what was Philosophy that it should lift its 
voice against them ? The word of the priest — nine parts 
a charlatan, and one part, perhaps, himself imposed on — 
was absolute. He knew the counsels of Osiris, he knew 
that the question which would be asked at the dread tribu- 
nal was not whether a man had been just, and true, and 
merciful, but whether he had believed what he was told to 



Calvinism. 27 

believe, and had duly paid the fees to the temple. And 8o 
the world went its way, controlled by no di'ead of retribu- 
tion ; and on the tomb-frescoes you can see legions of slaves 
under the lash dragging from the quarries the blocks of 
granite which were to form the eternal monuments of the 
Pharaohs' tyranny ; and you read in the earliest authentic 
history that when there was a fear that the slave-races 
should multiply so fast as to be dangerous, their babies were 
flung to the crocodiles. 

One of these slave-races rose at last in revolt. Noticea- 
bly it did not rise against oppression as such, or directly in 
consequence of oppression. We hear of no massacre of 
slave-drivers, no burning of towns or villages, none of the 
usual accompaniments of peasant insurrections. If Egypt 
was plagued, it was not by mutinous mobs or incendiaries. 
Half a million men simjDly rose up and declared that they 
could endure no longer the mendacity, the hypocrisy, the 
vile and incredible rubbish which was offered to them in 
the sacred name of religion. " Let us go," they said, " into 
the wilderness, go out of these soft water-meadows and corn- 
fields, forsake our leeks and our flesh-pots, and take in 
exchange a life of hardship and wandering, ' that we may 
worship the God of our fathers.' " Their leader had been 
trained in the wisdom of the Egyptians, and among the 
rocks of Sinai had learnt that it was wind and vanity. 
The half-obscured traditions of his ancestors awoke to life 
again, and were rekindled by him in his people. They 
would bear with lies no longer. They shook the dust of 
Egypt from their feet, and the prate and falsehood of it from 
their souls, and they withdrew, with all belonging to them, 
into the Arabian desert, that they might no longer serve 
cats, and dogs, and bulls, and beetles, but the Eternal Spirit 
who had been pleased to make his existence known to 
them. They sung no paeans of liberty. They were deliv- 
ered from the house of bondage, but it was the bondage of 
mendacity, and they left it only to assume another service. 



28 Calvinism, 

The Eternal had taken pity on them. In revealing his true 
nature to them, He had taken them for his children. They 
were not their own, but his, and they laid their lives under 
commandments which were as close a copy as, with the 
knowledge which they possessed, they could make, to the 
moral laws of the Maker of the universe. In essentials the 
Book of the Law was a covenant of practical justice. Re- 
wards and punishments were alike immediate, both to each 
separate person and to the collective nation. Retribution 
in a life to- come was dropped out of sight, not denied, but 
not insisted on. The belief in it had been corrupted to evil, 
and rather enervated than encouraged the efforts after pres- 
ent equity. Every man was to reap as he had sown, — 
here, in the immediate world, — to live under his own vine 
and fig-tree, and thrive or suffer according to his actual de- 
serts. Religion was not a thing of past or ftiture, an account 
of things that had been, or of things which one day would 
be again. God was the actual living ruler of real every-day 
life ; nature-worship was swept away, and in the warmth 
and passion of conviction they became, as I said, the soldiers 
of a purer creed. In Palestine, where they found idolatry 
in a form yet fouler and more cruel than what they had left 
behind them, they trampled it out as if in inspired abomi- 
nation of a system of which the fruits were so detestable. 
They were not perfect, — very far from perfect. An army 
at best is made of mixed materials, and war, of all ways of 
making wrong into right, is the harshest ; but they were 
directed by a noble purpose, and they have left a mark 
never to be effaced in the history of the human race. 

The fire died away. " The Israelites," we are told, " min- 
gled among the heathen and learned their works." They 
ceased to be missionaries. They hardly and fitfully pre- 
served the records of the meaning of their own exodus. Eight 
hundred years went by, and the flame rekindled in another 
country. Cities more splendid even than the hundred-gated 
Thebes itself had risen on the banks of the Euphrates. 



Calvinism. 29 

Grand niilitary empires had been founded on war and con- 
quest. Peace had followed when no enemies were left to 
conquer ; and with peace had come philosophy, science, 
agricultural enterprise, magnificent engineering works for 
the draining and irrigation of the Mesopotamian plains. 
Temples and palaces towered into the sky. The pomp and 
luxury of Asia rivaled, and even surpassed, the glories of 
Egypt ; and by the side of it a second nature- worsliip, 
which, if less elaborately absurd, was more deeply detest- 
able. The foulest vices were consecrated to the service of 
the gods, and the holiest ceremonies were inoculated with 
im^iurity and sensuality. 

The seventh century before the Christian era was distin- 
guished over the whole East by extraordinary religious 
revolutions. With the most remarkable of these, that which 
bears the name of Buddha, I am not here concerned. 
Buddhism has been the creed for more than two thousand 
years of half the human race, but it left unaffected our 
own western world, and therefore I here pass it by. 

Simultaneously with Buddha, there appeared another 
teacher, Zerdusht, or, as the Greeks called him, Zoroaster, 
among the hardy tribes of the Persian mountains. He 
taught a creed which, like that of the Israelites, was es- 
sentially moral and extremely simple. Nature-worship, as 
I said, knew nothing of morality. When the objects of 
natural idolatry became personified, and physical phenom- 
ena were metamorphosed into allegorical mythology, the 
indifference to morality which was obvious in nature became 
ascribed, as a matter of course, to gods which were but 
nature in a personal disguise. Zoroaster, like Moses, saw 
behind the physical forces into the deeper laws of right and 
wrong. He supposed ' himself to discover two antagonist 
powers contending in the heart of man as well as in the out- 
ward universe, — a spirit of light and a spirit of darkness, 
a spirit of truth and a spirit of falsehood, a spirit life-giving 
and beautiful, a spirit poisonous and deadly. To one or other 



30 Calviyiism. 

of these powers man was necessarily in servitude. As tne 
follower of Ormuzd, he became enrolled in the celestial 
armies, whose business was to fight against sin and misery, 
against wrong-doing and imjDurity, against injustice and lies 
and baseness of all sorts and kinds ; and every one with a 
soul in him to prefer good to evil was summoned to the 
holy wars, which would end at last after ages in the final 
overthrow of Ahriman. 

The Persians caught rapidly Zoroaster's spirit. Uncor- 
1 upted by luxury, they responded eagerly to a voice which 
they recognized as speaking truth to them. They have 
been called the Puritans of the Old World. Never any 
people, it is said, hated idolatry as they hated it, and for 
the simple reason that they hated lies. A Persian lad, 
Herodotus tells us, was educated in three especial accom- 
plishments. He was taught to ride, to shoot, and to speak 
the truth, — that is to say, he was brought up to be brave, 
active, valiant, and upright. When a man speaks the truth, 
you may count pretty surely that he possesses most other 
virtues. Half the vices in the world rise out of cowardice, 
and one who is afraid of lying is usually afraid of nothing 
else./ Speech is an article of trade in which we are all 
dealers, and the one beyond all others where we are most 
bound to provide honest wares : — 

EX'^po^ f^oi KaKELvog 6(j.ug 'Aidao 7:v?\,alaLV 

6g i9' erepov fiev Kev&y hi (ppeacv uXko 6e dizy. 

This seems to have been the Persian temperament, and in 
virtue of it they were chosen as the instruments — clearly 
recognized as such by the Prophet Isaiah for one — which 
were to sweep the earth clean of abominations, which had 
grown to an intolerable height. Bel bowed down, and 
Nebo had to stoop before them; Babylon, the lady of 
kingdoms, was laid in the dust, and " her star-gazers, and 
her astrologers, and her monthly prognosticators " could not 
save her with all their skill. They and she were borne 



\\/ 



Calvinism. ^1 

away together. Egypt's turn followed. Retribution had 
been long delayed, but her cup ran over at last. The palm- 
groves were flung into the river, the temples polluted, the 
idols mutilated. The precious Apis, for all its godhood, was 
led with a halter before the Persian king, and stabbed in 
the sight of the world by Persian steel. 

" Profane ! " exclaimed the priests, as pious persons, on 
like occasions, have exclaimed a thousand times : " these 
Puritans have no reverence for holy things." Rather it is 
because they do reverence things which deserve reverence 
that they loathe and abhor the counterfeit. What does an 
ascertained imposture deserve but to be denied, exposed, 
insulted, trampled under foot, danced upon, if nothing less 
wUl serve, till the very geese take courage and venture to 
hiss derision? Are we to wreathe aureoles round the 
brows of phantasms lest we shock the sensibilities of the 
idiots who have believed them to be divine? Was the 
Prophet Isaiah so tender in his way of treating such mat- 
ters ? 

"Who hath formed a god, or molten a graven image that is 
profitable for nothing ? He heweth him down cedars. He tak- 
eth the cypress and the oak from the trees of the forest. He 
burneth part thereof in the fire; with part thereof he eateth 
flesh He roasteth roast, and is satisfied : yea, he warmeth hnn- 
self, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire: and the 
residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image: he 
falleth down unto it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, 
and saith, Deliver me ; for thou art my god. 

" Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the 
Lord, for the glory of His majesty when He ariseth to shake ter- 
ribly the earth. In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver 
and gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to 
the moles and the bats." 

Again events glide on. Persia runs the usual course. 
Virtue and truth produced strength, strength dominion, do- 
minion riches, riches luxury, and luxury weakness and col- 
lapse, — fatal sequence repeated so often, yet to so little pur- 



82 Calvinism. 

pose. The hardy warrior of the mountains degeneratet] 
into a vulgar sybarite. His manliness became effeminacy ; 
his piety a ritual of priests ; himself a liar, a coward, and a 
slave. The Greeks conquered the Persians, copied their 
manners, and fell in turn before the Romans. We count 
little more than 500 years from the fall of Babylon, and the 
entire known world was lying at the feet of a great military 
despotism. Coming originally themselves from the East, 
the classic nations had brought with them also the primae- 
val nature-worship of Asia. The Greek imagination had 
woven the Eastern metaphors into a singular mythology, 
in which the gods were represented as beings possessing in a 
splendid degree physical beauty, physical strength, with the 
kind of awfulness which belonged to their origin ; the fitful, 
wanton, changeable, yet also terrible powers of the ele- 
mental world. Translated into the language of humanity, 
the actions and adventures thus ascribed to the gods be- 
came in process of time impossible to be believed. Intel- 
lect expanded ; moral sense grew more vigorous, and with 
it the conviction that if the national traditions were true, 
man must be more just than his Maker. In ^schylus and 
Sophocles, in Pindar and Plato, you see conscience asserting 
its sovereignty over the most sacred beliefs, — instinctive 
reverence and piety struggling sometimes to express them- 
selves under the names and forms of the past, sometimes 
bursting out uncontrollably into indignant abhorrence : — 

'E//oi 6* uTcopa yaarplfxapyov 

MaKapuv tiv' elrreiv : 

'A^iaTajiaL . . . 

Kai TTOv TL Kol (3poTO)v (l)p£vag 

inep Tov ukadrj \6yov 

dedaLdakiievoi ipevdeoL tzolklXoi^ 

k^a-naribvTL fivdot. 

Xuptad' uTzep anavTU revx^t 

rd fj-EiTiixa -QvaToli 

emipepoLaa Tifj.uv 

Kal uniOTOV tjirjaaro ttlgtov 

tfx/ievai, TO TcokTiaKtq. 



Calvinism, 33 

" To ine 'twere strange indeed 
To charge the blessed gods with greed. 
I dare not do it. . . . 

INIyths too oft, 
With quaintly colore;! lius en wrought, 
To stray tVuni truth have mortals brought. 
And Art, which round all things below 
A charm of loveliness can tnrow, 
Has robed the false in honor's hue, 
And made the unbelievable seem true." 

*' All religions," says Gibbon, " are to the vulgar equally "N 
true, to the philosopher equally false, and to the statesman j 
equally useful : " thus scornfully summing up the theory of ^ 
the matter which he found to be held by the politicians of 
tlie age which he was describing, and perhaps of his own. 
Religion, as a moral force, died away with the establishment 
of the Roman Empire, and with it died probity, patriotism, 
and human dignity, and all that men had learnt in nobler 
ages to honor and to value as good. Order reigned un- 
broken under the control of the legions. Industry Nour- 
ished, and natural science, and most of the elements of what 
we now call civilization. Ships covered the seas. Huge 
towns adorned the imperial provinces. The manners of 
men became more artificial, and in a certain sense more 
humane. Religion was a State establishment, — a decent 
acknowledgment of a power or powers which, if they existed 
at all, amused themselves in the depths of sjjace, careless, so 
their deity was not denied, of the woe or weal of humanity : 
the living fact, supreme in Cliurch and State, being the 
wearer of the purple, who, as the practical realization of au- 
thority, assumed the name as well as the substance. The 
one god immediately known to man was henceforth the 
Divus Ca3sar, whose throne in the sky was waiting empty 
for him till his earthly exile was ended, and it pleased him 
to join or rejoin his kindred divinities. 

It was the era of atheism, — atheism such as this earth 
never witnessed before or since. You who have read Tac- 
itus know the practical fruits of it, as they appeared at the 
3 



34 Calvinkm. 

heart of the system in the second Babylon, the proud city 
of the seven hills. You will remember how, for the crime 
of a single slave, the entire household of a Roman patrician, 
four hundred innocent human beings, were led in chains 
across the Forum and murdered by what was called law. 
You will remember the exquisite Nero, who, in his love of 
art, to throw himself more fully into the genius of Greek 
tragedy, committed incest with his mother that he might be 
a second CEdipus, and assassinated her that he might realize 
the sensations of Orestes. You will recall one scene which 
Tacitus describes, not as exceptional or standing alone, but 
merely, he says, " quas ut exemplum referam ne sajpius 
eadem prodigentia narranda sit," — the hymeneal night- 
banquet on Agrippa's lake, graced by the presence of the 
wives and daughters of the Roman senators, where amidst 
blazing fireworks and music and cloth-of-gold pavilions and 
naked prostitutes, the majesty of the Ceesars celebrated his 
nuptials with a boy. 

There, I conceive, was the visible product of material 
civilization, where there was no fear of God, in the middle 
of it, — the final outcome of wealth, and prosperity, and art, 
and culture, raised aloft as a sign for all ages to look upon. 

But it is not to this, nor to the fire of hell which in due 
time burst out to consume it, that I desire now to draw 
your attention. I have to point out to you two purifying 
movements which were at work in the midst of the pollu- 
tion, one of which came to nothing and survives only in 
books, the second a force which was to mould for ages the 
future history of man. Both require our notice, for both 
singularly contained the particular feature which is called 
the reproach of Calvinism. 

The blackest night is never utterly dark. When man- 
kind seem most abandoued there are always a seven thou- 
sand somewhere who have not bowed the knee to the fash- 
ionable opinions of the hour. Among the great Roman 
families a certain number remained republican in feeling 



Calvinum, 35 

and republican in habit. The State religion was as incredi- 
ble to them as to every one else. They could not persuade 
themselves that they could discover the will of Heaven in 
the color of a calf's liver or in the appetite of the sacred 
chickens ; but they had retained the moral instincts of their 
citizen ancestors. They knew nothing of God or the god. 
but they had something in themselves which made sensual- 
ity nauseating instead of pleasant to them. They had an 
austere sense of the meaning of the word " duty." They 
could distinguish and reverence the nobler possibilities of 
their nature. They disdained what was base and efFemi- 
uate, and, though religion failed them, they constructed out 
of philosophy a rule which would serve to live by. Stoi- 
cism is a not unnatural refuge of thoughtful men in con- 
fused and skeptical ages. It adheres rigidly to morality. 
It offers no easy Epicurean explanation of the origin of 
man, wliich resolves him into an organization of particles, 
and dismisses him again into nothingness. It recognizes 
only that men who are the slaves of their passions are mis- • 
erable and impotent, and insists that personal inclinations 
shall be subordinated to conscience. It prescribes plainness 
of life, that the number of our necessities may be as few as 
possible, and in placing the business of life in intellectual and 
moral action, it destroys the temptation to sensual gratifi- 
cations. It teaches a contempt of death so complete that 
it can be encountered without a flutter of the pulse ; and, 
while it raises men above the suffering wliich makes others' 
miserable, generates a proud submissiveness to sorrow 
which noblest natures feel most keenly, by representing 
this huge scene and the shows which it presents as the work 
of some unknown but irresistible force, against which it is 
vain to struggle and childish to repine. 

As with Calvinism, a theoretic belief in an overruling 
will or destiny was not only compatible with, but seemed 
naturally to issue in the control of the animal appetites. 
The Stoic did not argue that, " As fate governs all thino-s, I 



36 Calvmism. 

can do no wrong, and therefore 1 will take my pleasure ; '* 
but rather, " The moral law within me is the noblest part 
of my being, and compels me to submit to it." He did not 
withdraw from the world like the Christian anchorite. He 
remained at his post in the senate, the Forum, or the army. 
A Stoic in Marcus Aurelius gave a passing dignity to the 
dishonored purple. In Tacitus, Stoicism has left an eter- 
nal evidence how grand a creature man may be, though un- 
assisted by conscious dependence on external spiritual help, 
through steady disdain of what is base, steady reverence for 
all that deserves to be revered, and inflexible integrity in 
word and deed. 

But Stoicism could under no circumstances be a regener- 
ating power in the general world. It was a position only 
tenable to the educated ; it was without hope and without 
enthusiasm. From a contempt of the objects which man- 
kind most desired, the step was short and inevitable to 
contempt of mankind themselves. Wrapped in mournful 
self-dependence, the Stoic could face calmly for himself 
whatever lot the fates might send : — 

" Si fractus illabatur orbis, 
Impavidum feiient ruinae." 

But, natural as such a creed might be in a Roman noble 
under the Empire, natural perhaps as it may always be in 
corrupted ages and amidst disorganized beliefs, the very 
sternness of Stoicism was repellent. It carried no consola- 
tion to the hearts of the suffering millions, who were in no 
danger of being led away by luxury, because their whole lives 
were passed in poverty and wretchedness. It was individ- 
ual, not missionary. The Stoic declared no active war 
against corruption. He stood alone, protesting scornfully 
in silent example against evils which he was without power 
to cure. Like Csesar, he folded himself in his mantle. The 
world might do its worst. He would keep his own soul un- 
stained. 

Place beside the Stoics their contemporaries, the Galilean 



Calvinism, 37 

fishermen and the tent-maker of Tarsus. 1 am not about 
to sketch in a few paragraphs the rise of Christianity. I 
mean only to point to the principles on which the small 
knot of men gathered themselves together who were about 
to lay the foundations of a vast spiritual revolution. The 
guilt and wretchedness in which the world was steeped St. 
Paul felt as keenly as Tacitus. Like Tacitus, too, he be- 
lieved that the wild and miserable scene which he beheld 
was ^ result of accident, but had been ordained so to be, 
and was the direct expression of an all-mastering Power. 
But he saw also that this Power was no blind necessity or 
iron chain of connected cause and effect, but a jDerfectly 
just, perfectly wise being, who governed all things by the 
everlasting immutable laws of his own nature ; that when 
these laws were resisted or forgotten they wrought ruin, 
and confusion, and slavery to death and sin ; that when 
they were recognized and obeyed, the curse would be taken 
away, and freedom and manliness come back again. 
Whence the disobedience had first risen was a problem 
which St. Paul solved in a manner not all unlike the Per- 
sians. There was a rebellious spirit in the universe, pene- 
trating into men's hearts, and prompting them to disloyalty 
and revolt. It removed the question a step further l)ack 
without answering it, but the fact was plain as the sun- 
liorht. Men had neojlected the laws of their Maker. In 
neglecting them they had brought universal ruin, not on 
themselves only, but on all society ; and if the world was to 
be saved from destruction, they must be persuaded or forced 
back into their allegiance. The law itself had been once 
more revealed on the mountains of Palestine, and in tlie 
person and example of One who had lived and died to 
make it known ; and those who had heard and known Him, 
being possessed with his spirit, felt themselves com- 
missioned as a missionary legion to publish the truth to 
mankind. They were not, like the Israelites or the Per- 
sians, to fight with the sword, — not even in their own de- 



38 Calvinism. 

feuse. The sword can take life, but not give it ; and the 
command to the Apostles was to sow the invisible seed in 
the hot-bed of corruption, and feed and foster it, and water 
it, with the blood, not of others, but themselves. Their 
own wills, ambitions, hopes, desires, emotions, were 
swallowed up in the will to which they had surrendered 
themselves. They were soldiers. It was St. Paul's meta- 
phor, and no other is so appropriate. They claimed no 
merit through their calling ; they were too coHScio'A'3 of 
their own sins to indulge in the poisonous reflection that 
they were not as other men. They were summoned out on 
their allegiance, and armed with the spiritual strength 
which belongs to the consciousness of a just cause. If they 
indulged any personal hope, it was only that their weak- 
nesses would not be remembered against them, — that, hav- 
ing been chosen for a work in which the victory was as- 
sured, they would be made themselves worthy of their 
calling, and, though they might slide, would not be allowed 
to fall. Many mysteries remained unsolved. Man was as 
clay in the potter's hand ; one vessel was made to honor 
and another to dishonor. Why, who could tell ? This only 
they knew, that they must themselves do no dishonor to 
the spirit that was in them, — gain others, gain all who 
would join them for their common purpose, and fight with 
all their souls against ignorance and sin. 

The fishermen of Gennesaret planted Christianity, and 
many a winter and many a summer have since rolled over 
it. More than once it has shed its leaves and seemed to 
be dying, and when the buds burst again the color of the 
foliage was changed. The theory of it which is taught to- 
day in the theological schools of St. Andrew's would have 
souLded strange from the pulpit of your once proud cathe- 
dral. As the same thought expresses itself in many lan- 
guages, so spiritual truths assume ever-varying forms. The 
garment fades, — the moths devour it, — the woven fibres 
disintesjrate and turn to dust. The idea only is immortal, 



Oalvinism, 39 

and never fades. The hermit who made his cell below the 
cliff where the cathedral stands, the monkish architect who 
designed the plan of it, the princes who brought it to per- 
fection, the Protestants who shattered it into ruin, the 
preacher of last Sunday at the University church, would 
have many a quarrel were they to meet now before they 
would understand each other. But at the bottom of the 
minds of all the same thought would be predominant, — 
that they were soldiers of the Almighty, commissioned to 
fight with lies and selfishness, and that all alike, they and 
those against whom they were contending, were in his 
hands, to deal with after his own pleasure. 

Again six centuries go by. Christianity becomes the 
religion of the Roman Empire. The Empire divides, and 
the Church is divided with it. Europe is overrun by the 
Northern nations. The power of the Western Cassars 
breaks in pieces, but the Western Church stands erect, 
makes its way into the hearts of the conquerors, penetrates 
the German forests, opens a path into Britain and Ireland. 
By the noble Gothic nations it is welcomed with passionate 
enthusiasm. The warriors of Odin are transformed into a 
Christian chivalry, and the wild Valhalla into a Christian 
heaven. Fiery, passionate nations are not tamed in a gen- 
eration or a century, but a new conception of what was 
praiseworthy and excellent had taken hold of their imagi- 
nation and the understanding. Kings, when their day of 
toil was over, laid down crown and sword, and retired into 
cloisters, to pass what remained of life to them in prayers 
and meditations on eternity. The supreme object of rever- 
ence was no longer the hero of the battle-field, but the 
barefoot missionary who was carrying the Gospel among 
the tribes that were still untaught. So beautiful in their 
conception of him was the character of one of these wander- 
ing priests that their stories formed a new mythology. So 
vast were the real miracles which they were working on 
men's souls that wonders of a more ordinary sort were 



40 Calvinism. 

assigned to them as a matter of course. They raised the 
dead, they healed the sick, they cast out devils with a 
word or with the sign of the cross. Plain facts were too 
poor for the enthusiasm of German piety ; and noble hu- 
man figures were exhibited, as it were, in the resplendent 
light of a painted window, in the etfort to do them exagger- 
ated honor. 

It was jDity, for truth only smells sweet forever, and 
illusions, however innocent, are deadly as the canker-worm. 
Long cycles had to pass before the fruit of these poison- 
seeds would ripen. The practical result meanwhile was to 
substitute in the minds of the sovereign races which were 
to take the lead in the coming era the i3rinciples of the 
moral law for the law of force and the sword. 

The Eastern branch of the divided Church experienced 
meanwhile a less happy fortune. In the East there was no 
virgin soil like the great, noble Teutonic peoples. Asia was 
a worn-out stage, on which drama after drama of history 
had been played, and played out. Languid luxury only 
was there, huge aggregation of wealth in particular local- 
ities, and the no less inevitable shadow attached to luxury 
by the necessities of things, oppression and misery and 
squalor. Christianity and the world had come to terms 
after the established fashion, — the world to be let alone in 
its pleasures and its sins ; the Church relegated to opinion, 
with free liberty to split doctrinal hairs to the end of time. 
The work of the Church's degradation had begun, even 
before it accepted the tainted hand of Constantine. Al- 
ready in the third century speculative Christianity had 
become the fashionable creed of Alexandria, and had pur- 
chased the favor of patrician congregations, if not by open 
tolerance of vice, yet by leaving it to grow unresisted. St. 
Clement details contemptuously the inventory of the boudoir 
of a fine lady of his flock, the list of essences on her toilet- 
table, the shoes, sandals, and slippers with which her dainty 
feet were decorated in endless variety. He describes her 



Calvinism. 41 

as she ascends the steps of the PaatXiK-q, to which she was 
going for what she called her prayers, with a page lifting 
up her train. He paints her as she walks along the street, 
her petticoats projecting with some horsehair arrangement 
behind, and the street boys jeering at her as she passes. 

All that Christianity was meant to do in making life 
simple and habits pure was left undone, while, with a few 
exceptions, like that of St. Clement himself, the intellectual 
energy of its bishops and teachers was exhausted in spinning 
endless cobwebs of metaphysical theology. Human life at 
the best is enveloped in darkness ; we know not what we 
are or whither we are bound. Religion is the light by which 
we are to see our way along the moral pathways without 
straying into the brake or the morass. We are not to look 
at religion itself, but at surrounding things with the help 
of religion. If we fasten our attention upon the light 
itself, analyzing it into its component rays, speculating 
on the union and composition of the substances of which it 
is composed, not only will it no longer serve us for a guide, 
but our dazzled senses lose their natural powers ; we should 
grope our way more safely in conscious blindness. 

"When the light within you is darkness, how great is that 
darkness ! " 

In the place of the old material idolatry we erect a new \ 
idolatry of words and phrases. Our duty is no longer to 
be true, and honest, and brave, and self-denying, and pure, 
but to be exact in our formulas, to hold accurately some 
nice and curious proposition, to place damnation in straying 
a hair's breadth from some symbol which exults in being un- 
intelligible, and salvation in the skill with which the mind / 
can balance itself on some intellectual tight-rope. 

There is no more instructive phenomenon in history than 
the ease and rapidity with which the Arabian caliphs lopped 
off the fairest provinces of the Eastern Empire. When na- 
tions are easily conquered, we may be sure that they have 
first lost their moral self-respect. When their religions, as 



42 Calvinism. 

they call them, go down at a breath, those religions have 
become already but bubbles of vapor. The laws of Heaven 
are long-enduring, but their patience comes to an end at 
last. Because justice is not executed speedily, men persuade 
themselves that there is no such thing as justice. But the 
lame foot, as the Greek j)roverb said, overtakes the swift 
one in the end ; and the longer the forbearance, the sharper 
the retribution when it comes. 

As the Greek theology was one of the most complicated 
accounts ever offered of the nature of God and his relation 
to man, so the message of Mahomet, when he first unfolded 
the green banner, was one of the most simple : There is no 
god but God ; God is King, and you must and shall obey 
his will. This was Islam, as it was first offered at the 
sword's point to people who had lost the power of under- 
standing any other argument : Your, images are wood and 
stone ; your metaphysics are words without understanding ; 
the world lies in wickedness and wretchedness because you 
have forgotten the statutes of your Master, and you shall go 
back to those ; you shall fulfill the purpose for which you 
were set to live upon the earth, or you shall not live at all. 

Tremendous inroad ujDon the liberties of . conscience ! 
What right, it is asked, have those people that you have 
been calling soldiers of the Almighty to interfere by force 
with the opinions of others ? Let them leave us alone ; we 
meddle not with them. Let them, if they please, obey those 
laws they talk of ; we have other notions of such things; 
we will obey ours, and let the result judge between us. 
The result was judging between them. The meek Apostle, 
with no weapon but his word and his example, and winning 
victories by himself submitting to be killed, is a fairer object 
than a fierce Kaled, calling himself the sword of the Al- 
mighty. But we cannot order for ourselves in what way 
these things shall be. The caitiff Damascenes to whom 
Kaled gave the alternative of the Koran or death were men 
themselves, who had hands to hold a sword with if tliey had 



Calvinism. 43 

heart to use it, or a creed for which they cared to risk theu* 
lives. In such a quarrel superior strength and courage are 
the signs of the presence of a nobler conviction. 

To the question, " What right have you to interfere with 
us ? " there is but one answer : " We must. These things 
which we tell you are true ; and in your hearts you know 
it ; your own cowardice convicts you. The moral laws of 
your Maker are written in your consciences as well as in 
ours. If you disobey them, you bring disaster not only on 
your own wretched selves, but on all around you. It is our 
common concern, and if you will not submit, in the name 
of our Master we will compel you." 

Any fanatic, it will be said, might use the same language. \ 
Is not history full of instances of dreamers or impostors,-^ 
" boasting themselves to be somebody," who for some wild 
illusion, or for their own ambition, have thrown the world 
into convulsions ? Is not Mahomet himself a signal — the 
most signal — illustration of it ? I should say rather that 
when men have risen in arms for a false cause the event has 
proved it by the cause coming to nothing. The world is 
not so constituted that courage, and strength, and endurance, 
and organization, and success long sustained are to be ob- 
tained in the service of falsehood. If I could think that, 
I should lose the most convincing reason for believing that 
we are governed by a moral power. The moral laws of our 
being execute themselves through the mstrumentality of 
men ; and in those great movements which determine the 
moral condition of many nations through many centuries, 
the stronger side, it seems to me, has uniformly been the 
better side, and stronger because it has been better. 

I am not upholding Mahomet as if he had been a perfect 
man, or the Koran as a second Bible. The crescent was 
no sun, nor even a complete moon reigning full-orbed in 
the night heaven. The light there was in it was but re- 
flected from the sacred books of the Jews and the Arab 
traditions. The morality of it was defective. The detailed 



44 Calvinism. 

conception of man's duties inferior, far inferior, to wliat St. 
Martin and St. Patrick, St. Columba and St. Augustine were 
teaching or had taught in Western Europe. Mahometan- 
ism rapidly degenerated. The first caUphs stood far above 
Saladin. The descent from Saladin to a modern Moslem 
despot is like a fall over a 23recipice. All established things, 
nations, constitutions, all established things which have life 
in them, have also the seeds of death. They grow, they 
have their day of usefulness, they decay and j^ass away, 
" lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 

But the light which there was in the Moslem creed was 
real. It taught the omnipotence and omnij)resence of one 
eternal Spirit, the Maker and Ruler of all things, by whose 
everlasting purj)Ose all things were, and whose will all 
things must obey ; and this central truth, to which later 
experience and broader knowledge can add nothing, it has 
taught so clearly and so simply that in Islam there has been 
no room for heresy, and scarcely for schism. 

The Koran has been accused of countenancing sensual 
vice. Rather it bridled and brought within limits a sensu- 
ality which before was unbounded. It forbade and has 
absolutely extinguished, wherever Islam is professed, the 
bestial drunkenness which is the disgrace of our Christian 
English and Scottish towns. Even now, after centuries of 
decay, the Mussulman probably governs his life by the 
Koran more accurately than most Christians obey the Ser- 
mon on the Mount or the Ten Commandments. In our 
own India, where the Moslem creed retains its relative 
superiority to the superstitions of the native races, the Mus- 
sulman is a higher order of being. Were the English to 
withdraw, he would retake the sovereignty of the peninsula 
by natural right, — not because he has larger' bones and 
, sinews, but by superiority of intellect and heart ; in other 
words, because he has a truer faith. 

I said that while Christianity degenerated in the East 
with extreme rapidity, in the West it retained its firmer 



Calvinism. 45 

characters. It became the vitalizing spirit of a new organ- 
ization of society. All that we call modern civilization in 
a sense which deserves the name is the visible expression 
of the transforming power of the Gospel. 

I said also that by the side of the healthy influences of 
regeneration there were sown along with it the germs 
of evil to come. All living ideas, from the necessity of 
things, take up into their constitutions whatever forces are 
already working round them. The most ardent aspirations ' 
after truth will not anticipate knowledge, and the errors 
of the imagination become consecrated as surely as the 
purest impulses of conscience. So long as the laws of the , 
physical world remain a mystery, the action of all uncom- 
prehended phenomena, the movements of the heavenly 
bodies, the winds and storms, famines, murrains, and hu- 
man epidemics, are ascribed to the voluntary interference 
of supernatural beings. The belief in witches and fairies, 
in spells and talismans, could not be dispelled by science, 
for science did not exist. The Church therefore entered 
into competition with her evil rivals on their own ground. 
The saint came into the field against the enchanters. The 
powers of charm and amulets were eclipsed by martyrs' 
relics, sacraments, and holy water. The magician, with the 
devil at his back, got to yield to the divine powers im- 
parted to priests by spiritual descent in the imposition of 
hands. 

Thus a gigantic system of supernaturalism overspread 
the entire Western world. There was no deliberate im- 
position. The clergy were as ignorant as the people of 
true relations between natural cause and effect. Their 
business, so far as they were conscious of their purpose, 
was to contend against the works of the devil. They saw 
practically that they were able to convert men fi'om vio- 
lence and impurity to pity and self-restraint. Their very 
humility forbade them to attribute such wonderful results 
to their own teaching. When it was universally believed 



46 Calvinism, 

that human beings could make covenants with Satan by 
signing their names in blood, what more natural than that 
they should assume, for instance, that the sprinkling of 
water, the inaugurating ceremony of the purer and better 
life, should exert a mysterious mechanical influence upon 
the character ? 

If regeneration by baptism, however, with its kindred 
imaginations, was not true, innocence of intention could not 
prevent the natural consequences of falsehood. Time went 
on ; knowledge increased ; doubt stole in, and with doubt 
the passionate determination to preserve beliefs at all haz- 
\ ards which had grown too dear to superstition to be parted 
with. In the twelfth century the mystery called transub- 
stantiation had come to be regarded with widespread mis- 
; giving. To encounter skepticism, there then arose for the 
C first time what have been called pious frauds. It was not 
' perceived that men who lend themselves consciously to lies, 
with however excellent an intention, will become eventually 
deliberate rogues. The clergy doubtless believed that in 
the consecration of the elements an invisible change was 
really and truly effected. But to produce an effect on the 
secular mind the invisible had to be made visible. A gen- 
eral practice sprung up to pretend that in the breaking of 
the wafer real blood had gushed out ; real pieces of flesh 
were found between the fingers. The precious things thus 
produced were awfuUy preserved, and with the Pope's 
^ blessing were deposited in shrines, for the strengthening of 
N^ faith and the confutation of the presumptuous imbeliever. 
When a start has once been made on the road of decep- 
tion, the after-progress is a rapid one. The desired effect 
was not produced. Incredulity increased. Imposture ran 
( a race with unbelief in the vain hope of silencing inquiry, 
and with imposture all genuine love for spiritual or moral 
truth disappeared. 

You all know to what condition the Catholic Church had 
sunk at the beginning of the sixteenth century. An inso* 



Calvinism, 47 

lent hierarchy, with an army of priests behind them, domi- 
nated every country in Europe. The Church was like a 
hard nutshell round a shriveled kernel. The priests, in 
parting with their sincerity, had lost the control over their 
own appetites, which only sincerity can give. Profligate in 
their own lives, they extended to the laity the same easy 
latitude which they asserted for their own conduct. Relig- 
ious duty no longer consisted in leading a virtuous life, but 
in purchasing immunity for self-indulgence by one of the 
thousand remedies which Church officials were ever ready 
to dispense at an adequate price. 

The pleasant arrangement came to an end, — a sudden 
and terrible one. Christianity had not been upon the 
earth for nothing. The spiritual organization of the 
Church was corrupt to the core ; but in the general awaken- 
ing of Europe it was impossible to conceal the contrast be- 
tween the doctrines taught in the Catholic pulpits and the 
creed of which they were the counterfeit. Again and 
again the gathering indignation sputtered out to be sav- 
agely repressed. At last it pleased Pope Leo, who wanted 
money to finish St. Peter's, to send about spiritual hawkers 
with wares which were called indulgences, — notes to be 
presented at the gates of purgatory as passports to the 
easiest places there, — and then Luther spoke, and the 
whirlwind burst. 

I can but glance at the Reformation in Germany. Lu- 
ther himself was one of the grandest men that ever lived on 
earth. Never was any one more loyal to the hght that 
was in him, braver, truer, or wider-minded in the noblest 
sense of the word. The share of the work which fell to 
him Luther accomplished most perfectly. But he was ex- 
ceptionally fortunate in one way, that in Saxony he had his 
sovereign on his side, and the enemy, however furious, 
could not reach him with fleshly weapons, and could but 
grind his teeth and curse. Other nations who had caught 
Luther's spirit had to win their hberty on harder terms, 



48 Calvinism, 

and the Catholic churchmen were able to add to their other 
crimes the cruelty of fiends. Princes and politicians, who 
had State reasons for disliking popular outbursts, sided with 
the established spiritual authorities. Heresy was assailed 
with fire and sword, and a spirit harsher than Luther's was 
needed to steel the convert's hearts for the trials wliich 
came upon them. Lutheranism, when Luther himself was 
gone, and the thing which we in England know as Aiigli- 
canism, were inclined to temporizing and half-measures. 
The Lutheran congregations were but half emancipated 
from superstition, and shrank from pressing the struggle to 
extremities ; and half-measures meant half-hear tedness, con- 
victions which were but half convictions, and truth with an 
alloy of falsehood. Half-measures, however, would not 
quench the bonfires of Philip of Spain, or raise men in 
France or Scotland who would meet crest to crest the 
Princes of the House of Lorraine. The Reformers re- 
quired a position more sharply defined, and a sterner leader, 
and that leader they found in John Calvin. 

There is no occasion to say much of Calvin's personal 
history. His name is now associated only with gloom and 
austerity. Suppose it is true that he rarely laughed. He 
had none of Luther's genial and sunny humor. Could they 
have exchanged conditions, Luther's temper might have 
been somewhat grimmer, but he would never have been 
entirely like Calvin. Nevertheless, for hard times hard men 
are needed, and intellects which can pierce to the roots where 
truth and lies part company. It fares ill with the soldiers 
of religion when " the accursed thing " is in their camp. 
And this is to be said of Calvin, that so far as the state of 
knowledge permitted, no eye could have detected more 
keenly the unsound spots in the received creed of the Church, 
nor was there reformer in Europe so resolute to excise, 
tear out, and destroy what was distinctly seen to be false, — 
so resolute to establish what was true in its place, and make 
truth to the last fibre of it the rule of practical life. 



Calvinism. 49 

Ciilvmism as it existed at Geneva, and as it endeavored 
to be wherever it took root for a century and a half after 
him, was not a system of opinion, but an attempt to make 
the will of God as revealed in the Bible an authoritative 
guide for social as well as personal direction. Men wonder 
why the Calvinists, being so doctrinal, yet seemed to dwell 
so much and so emphatically on the Old Testament. It was 
because in the Old Testament they found, or thought they 
found, a divine example of national government, a distinct 
indication of the laws which men were ordered to follow, 
with visible and immediate punishments attached to disobe- 
dience. At Geneva, as for a time in Scotland, moral sins 
were treated after the example of the Mosaic law, as crimes 
to be punished by the magistrate. " Elsewhere," said Knox, 
speaking of Geneva, " the Word of God is taught as purely, 
but never anywhere have I seen God obeyed as faitli- 
fiilly." 1 

If it was a dream, it was at least a noble one. The 
Calvinists have been called intolerant. Intolerance of an 
enemy who is trying to kill you seems to me a pardonable 
state of mind. It is no easy matter to tolerate lies clearly 
convicted of being lies under any circumstances ; specially it 
is not easy to tolerate lies which strut about in the name of 
religion ; but there is no reason to suppose that the Calvin- 
ists at the beginning would have thought of meddling with 
the Church if they had been themselves let alone. They 
would have formed communities apart. Like the Israelites 
whom they wished to resemble, they would have withdrawn 
into the wilderness, — the Pilgrim Fathers actually did so 
withdraw into the wilderness of New England, — to worship 

1 In burning witche3 the Calvinists followed their model too exactly; 
but it is to be remembered that they really believed these poor creatures 
to have made a compact with Satan. And, as regards morality', it may 
be doubted whether inviting spirit-rappers to dinner, and allowing them to 
pretend to consult our dead relations, is very much more innocent. The 
first method is but excess of indignation with evil; the second is compla- 
cent toyiug with it. 

4 



50 Calvinism, 

the God of their fathers, and would have left argument and 
example to work their natural effect. Norman Leslie did 
not kill Cardinal Beaton down in the castle yonder because 
he was a Catholic, but because he was a murderer. The 
Catholics chose to add to their already incredible creed a 
fresh article, that they were entitled to hang and burn those 
who differed from them ; and in this quarrel the Calvinists, 
Bible in hand, appealed to the God of battles. They grew 
harsher, fiercer, — if you please, more fanatical. It was 
extremely natural that they should. They dwelt, as pious 
men are apt to dwell in suffering and sorrow, on the all- 
disposing power of Providence. Their burden grew lighter 
as they considered that God had so determined that they 
must bear it. But they attracted to their ranks almost 
every man in Western Europe that " hated a lie." They 
were crushed down, but they rose again. They were 
splintered and torn, but no power could bend or melt them. 
They had many faults ; let him that is without sin cast a 
stone at them. They abhorred as no body of men ever 
more abhorred all conscious mendacity, all impurity, all 
moral wrong of every kind so far as they could recognize it. 
Whatever exists at this moment in England and Scotland of 
conscientious fear of doing evil is the remnant of the con- 
victions which were branded by the Calvinists into the peo- 
ple's hearts. Though they failed to destroy Romanism, 
though it survives and may survive long as an opinion, they 
drew its fangs ; they forced it to abandon that detestable 
principle, that it was entitled to murder those who dissented 
from it. Nay, it may be said that by having shamed 
Romanism out of its practical corruption the Calvinists ena- 
bled it to revive. 

Why, it is asked, were they so dogmatic ? Why could 
they not be contented to teach men reasonably and quietly 
that to be wicked was to be miserable, that in the indul- 
gence of immoderate passions they would find vess happi- 
ness than in adhering to the rules of justice, o\ yielding to 



Calvinism, 61 

the impulses of more generous emotions ? And, for the 
rest, why could they not let fools be fools, and leave opinion 
free about matters of which neither they nor others could 
know anything certain at all ? 

I reply that it is not true that goodness is synonymous 
with happiness. The most perfect being who ever trod the 
soil of this jDlanet was called the Man of Sorrows. If hap- 
piness means absence of care and inexperience of painful 
emotion, the best securities for it are a hard heart and a 
good digestion. If morality has no better foundation than 
a tendency to promote happiness, its sanction is but a feeble ', 
uncertainty. If it be recognized as part of the constitution 
of the world, it carries with it its right to command ; and 
those who see clearly what it is, will insist on submission ^ 
to it, and derive authority from the distinctness of their ' 
recognition, to enforce submission where their power ex- 
tends. Philosophy goes no further than probabilities, and 
in every assertion keeps a doubt in reserve. Compare the 
remonstrance of the casual passer-by if a mob of ruffians are 
misbehaving themselves in the street with the downright 
energy of the policeman who strikes in fearlessly, one 
against a dozen, as a minister of the law. There is the 
same difference through life between the man who has a 
Bure conviction and him whose thoughts never rise beyond 
a " perhaps." 

Any fanatic may say as much, it is again answered, for 
the wildest madness. But the elementary principles of 
morality are not forms of madness. No one pretends that 
it is uncertain whether truth is better than falsehood, or jus- 
tice than injustice. Speculation can eat away the sanction, 
superstition can erect rival duties, but neither one nor the 
other pretends to touch the fact that these j^rinciples exist, 
and the very essence and life of all great religious move- 
ments is the recognition of them as of authority and as part 
of the eternal framework of things. 

There is, however, it must be allowed, something in what 



52 Calvinism. 

these objectors say. The power of Calvinism has waned. 
The discipline which it once aspired to maintain has fallen 
slack. Desire for ease and self-indulgence drag forever in 
quiet times at the heel of noble aspirations, while the shadow 
struggles to remain and preserve its outline when the sub- 
stance is passing away. The argumentative and logical 
side of Calvin's mind has created once more a fatal opportu- 
nity for a separation between opinion and morality. We 
have learnt, as we say, to make the best of both worlds, to 
take political economy for the rule of our conduct, and to 
relegate religion into the profession of orthodox doctrines. 
Systems have been invented to explain the inexplicable. 
Metaphors have been translated into formulas, and para- 
doxes intelligible to emotion have been thrust upon the 
acceptance of the reason ; while duty, the loftiest of all sen- 
sations which we are permitted to experience, has been 
resolved into the acceptance of a scheme of salvation for the 
individual human soul. Was it not written long ago, " He 
that will save his soul shall lose it " ? If we think of relig- 
ion only as a means of escaping what we call the wrath to 
come, we shall not escape it ; we are already under it ; we 
are under the burden of death, for we care only for our- 
selves. 

This was not the religion of your fathers ; tliis was not 
the Calvinism which overthrew spiritual wickedness, and 
hurled kings- from their thrones, and purged England and 
Scotland, for a time at least, of lies and charlatanry. Cal- 
vinism was the spirit which rises in revolt against untruth ; 
the spirit which, as I have shown you, has appeared, and 
reappeared, and in due time will appear again, unless God 
be a delusion, and man be as the beasts that perish. For it 
is but the inflashing upon the conscience of the nature and 
origin of the law^ by which mankind are governed, — laws 
wlHch-^>«i64,-whether we acknowledge them or whether we 
deny them, and will have their way, to our weal or woe, 
according to the attitude in which we please to place our- 



Calvinism. 53 

selves towards tliem, — iulierent, like the laws of gravity, in 
the nature of things, not made by us, not to be altered by 
us, but to be discerned and obeyed by us at our everlasting 
peril. 

Nay, rather the law of gravity is but a property of mate- 
rial things, and matter and all that belongs to it may one 
day fade away like a cloud and vanish. The moral law is 
inherent in eternity. " Heaven and earth shall pass away, 
but my word shall not pass away." The law is the expres- 
sion of the will of the Spirit of the Universe. The spirit in 
man which corresponds to and perceives the Eternal Spirit 
is part of its essence, and immortal as it is immortal. The 
Calvinists called the eye within us the Inspiration of the 
Almighty. Aristotle could see that it was not of earth, or 
any creature of space and time : — 

6 yap voO? (he says) ovaia Tt? ovcra eoiKev 
eyyiyveaOaL /cat ou (pdelpeadat,. 

What the thing is wliich we call ourselves we know not. 
It may be true — I for one care not if it be — that the 
descent of our mortal bodies may be traced through an 
ascending series to some glutinous jelly formed on the rocks 
of the primeval ocean. It is nothing to me how the Maker 
of me has been pleased to construct the organized substance 
which I call my body. It is mine, but it is not me. The 
vovi, the intellectual spirit, being an ova-ia, — an essence, — 
we believe to be an imperishable something which has been 
engendered in us from another source. As Wordsworth 
says : — 

" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; 

The soul that rises in us, our life's star, 
Hath elsewhere had its setting, 

And Cometh from afar: 
Not in entire forgetfulness, 
Not in utter nakedness, 

But trailing clouds of glor}-- do we come, 

From heaven, which is our home." 



A BISHOP OF THE TWELFTH 
CENTURY.^ 



To the skeptical student of the nineteenth century the 
ecclesiastical biographies of mediaival Europe are for the 
most part unprofitable studies. The writers of them were 
generally monks. The object for which they were com- 
posed was either the edification of the brethren of the 
convent, or the glorifying of its founder or benefactor. 
The Holy See in considering a claim to canonization dis- 
regarded the ordinary details of character and conduct. 
It dwelt exclusively on the exceptional and the wonderful, 
and the noblest of lives possessed but little interest for it 
unless accompanied by evidence of miracles, performed 
directly by the candidate while on earth or by his relics 
after his departure. Instead of pictures of real men the 
biographers present us with glorified images of what, in 
their opinion, the Church heroes ought to have been. St. 
Cuthbert becomes as legendary as Theseus, and the au- 
thentic figure is swathed in an embroidered envelope of 
legends, through which usually no trace of the genuine 
lineaments is allowed to penetrate. 

It happens however, occasionally, that in the midst of 
the imaginative rubbish which has thus come down to us, 
we encounter something of a character entirely different. 
"We find ourselves in the hands of writers who themselves 
saw what they describe, who knew as well as we know the 

1 Magna Vita S. Hugonis Episcopi Lincolnensis. From MSS. in the Bod- 
leian Library, Oxford, and the Imperial Library, Paris. Edited by the Rev. 
James F. Diraock, M. A., Rector of Bamburgh, Yorkshire. 



A Bishop of the Twelfth Century. 55 

distinction between truth and falsehood, and who could 
notice and appreciate genuine human qualities. Amidst 
the obscure forms of media3val history we are brought face 
to face with authentic flesh and blood, and we are able 
to see in clear sunlight the sort of person who, in those 
ages, was considered especially admirable, and, alive or 
dead, was held up to the reverence of mankind. To one 
of these I propose in the present article to draw some 
brief attention. It is the life of St. Hugo of Avalon, a 
monk of the Grand Chartreuse, who was invited by Henry 
II. into England, became Bishop of Lincoln, and was the 
designer, and in part builder, of Lincoln Cathedral. The 
biographer was his chaplain and constant companion- — 
Brother Adam — a monk like himself, though of another 
order, who became afterwards Abbot of Ensham ; and 
having learnt, perhaps from the bishop himself, the detest- 
ableness of lying, has executed his task with simple and 
scrupulous fidelity. The readers whose interests he was 
considering were, as usual, the inmates of convents. He 
omits, as he himself tells us, many of the outer and more 
secular incidents of the bishop's life, as unsuited to his 
audience. We have glimpses of kings, courts, and great 
councils, with other high matters of national moment. 
The years which the bishop spent in England were rich in 
events. There was the conquest of Ireland; there were 
Welsh and French wars ; the long struggle of Henry II. 
and his sons ; and, when Henry passed away, there was the 
Grand Crusade. Then followed the captivity of Coeur de 
Lion and the treachery of John ; and Hugo's work, it is 
easy to see, was not confined to the management of his 
diocese. On all this, however. Abbot Adam observes en- 
tire silence, not considering our curiosity, but the con- 
cerns of the souls of his own monks whom he would not 
distract by too lively representations of the world which 
they had abandoned. 

The book however, as it stands, is so rare a treasure 



t>Q A Bishoiy of the Twelfth Centuri/. 

that we will waste no time in describing what it is not. 
"Within its own compass it contains the -most vivid picture 
which has come down to us of England as it then was, and 
of the first Planta^^enet kino;s. 

Bishop Hugo came into the world in the mountainous 
country near Grenoble, on the borders of Savoy. Abbot 
Adam dwells with a certain pride upon his patron's 
parentage. He tells us indeed, sententiously, that it is 
better to be noble in morals than to be noble in blood — 
that to be born undistinguished is a less misfortune than 
to live so — but he regards a noble family only as an 
honorable setting for a nature which was noble in itself. 
The bishop was one of three children of a Lord of Avalon, 
and was born in a castle near Pontch«g"ra. His mother 
died when he was eight years old ; and his father having 
lost the chief interest which bound him to life, divided 
his estates between his two other sons, and withdrew with 
the little one into an adjoining monastery. There was a 
college attached to it, where the children of many of the 
neighboring barons were educated. Hugo, however, was 
from the first designed for a religious life, and mixed little 
with the other boys. " You, my little fellow," his tutor 
said to him, " I am bringing up for Christ : you must not 
learn to play or trifle." The old Lord became a monk. 
Hugo grew up beside him in the convent, waiting on him 
as he became infirm, and smoothing the downward road ; 
and meanwhile learning whatever of knowledge and prac- 
tical piety his preceptors were able to provide. The life, 
it is likely, was not wanting in austerity, but the compara- 
tively easy rule did not satisfy Hugo's aspirations. The 
theory of " religion," as the conventual system in all its 
forms was termed, was the conquest of self, the reduction 
of the entire nature to the control of the better part of it ; 
and as the seat of self lay in the body, as temptation to do 
wrong, then as always, lay, directly or indirectly, in the 
desire for some bodily indulgence, or the dread of some 



A Bishojj of the Twelfth Century. 57 

bodily pain, the method pursued was the inuring of the 
body to the hardest fare, and the producing indiiFerence to 
cold, hunger, pain, or any other calamity which the chances 
of life could inflict upon it. Men so trained could play 
their part in life, whether high or low, with wonderful 
advantage. Wealth had no attraction for them. The 
world could give them nothing which they had learnt to 
desire, and take nothing from them which they cared to 
lose. The orders, however, differed in severity ; and at 
this time the highest discipline, moral and bodily, was to 
be found only among the Carthusians. An incidental visit 
with the prior of his own convent to the Grande Char- 
treuse, determined Hugo to seek admission into this extraor- 
dinary society. 

It was no light thing which he was undertaking. The 
majestic situation of the Grande Chartreuse itself, the 
loneliness, the seclusion, the atmosphere of sanctity, which 
hung around it, the mysterious beings who had made their 
home there, fascinated his imagination. A stern old monk, 
to whom he first communicated his intention, sujij'osing 
that he was led away by a passing fancy, looked grimly at 
his pale face and delicate limbs, and roughly told him that 
he was a fool. " Young man," the monk said to him, 
" the men who inhabit these rocks are hard as the rocks 
themselves. They have no mercy on their own bodies and 
none on others. The dress will scrape the flesh from your 
bones. The discipline will tear the bones themselves out 
of such frail limbs as 3^ours." 

The Carthusians combined in themselves the severities 
of the hermits and of the regular orders. Each member 
of the fraternity lived in his solitary cell in the rock, meet- 
ing his companions only in the chapel, or for instruction, 
or for the business of the house. They ate no meat. A 
loaf of bread was given to every brother on Sunday morn- 
ing at the refectory door, which was to last him through 
the week. An occasional mess of gruel was all that Avas 



58 A Bishop of the Twelfth Century. 

allowed in addition. His bedding was a horse-cloth, a pil- 
low, and a skin. His dress was a horsehair shirt, covered 
outside with linen, which was worn night and day, and 
the white cloak of the order, generally a sheepskin, and un- 
lined ; all else was bare. He was bound by vows of the 
strictest obedience. The order had business in all parts of 
the world. Now some captive was to be rescued from the 
Moors ; now some earl or king had been treading on the 
Church's privileges ; a brother was chosen to interpose in 
the name of the Chartreuse : he received his credentials and 
had to depart on the instant, with no furniture but his stick, 
to walk, it might be, to the furthest corner of Europe. 

A singular instance of the kind occurs incidentally in the 
present narrative. A certain brother Einard, who came 
ultimately to England, had been sent to Spain, to Granada, 
to Africa itself. Returning through Provence he fell in 
with some of the Albigenses, who spoke slightingly of the 
sacraments. The hard Carthusian saw but one course to 
follow with men he deemed rebels to his Lord. He was the 
first to urge the crusade which ended in their destruction. 
He roused the nearest orthodox nobles to arms, and Hugo's 
biographer tells delightedly how the first invasions were fol- 
lowed up by others on a larger scale, and " the brute and 
pestilent race, unworthy of the name of men, were cut away 
by the toil of the faithful, and by God's mercy destroyed." 

" Pitiless to themselves," as the old monk said, " they 
had no pity on any other man," as Einard afterwards was 
himself to feel. Even Hugo at times disapproved of their 
extreme severity. " God," he said, alluding to some cruel 
action of the society, " God tempers his anger with compas- 
sion. When he drove Adam from Paradise, he at least 
gave him a coat of skins : man knows not what mercy 
means." 

Einard, after this Albigensian affair, was ordered in the 
midst of a bitter winter to repair to Denmark. He was a 
very aged man, — a hundred years old, his brother monks 



A Bishop of the Twelfth Centura/. 59 

believed, — broken at any rate with age and toil. He 
shrank from the journey, he begged to be spared, and when 
the command was j^ersistcd in, he refused obedience. He 
was instantly expelled. Half-clad, amidst the ice and snow, 
he wandered from one religious house to another. In all 
he was refused admission. At last, one bitter, frosty night 
he appeared penitent at the gate of the Chartreuse, and 
prayed to be forgiven. The porter was forbidden to open 
to him till morning, but left the old man to shiver in the 
snow through the darkness. 

" By my troth, brother," Einard said the next day to him, 
" had you been a bean last night, between my teeth, they 
would have chopped you in pieces in spite of me." 

Such were the monks of the Chartreuse, among whom 
the son of the Avalon noble desired to be enrolled, as the 
highest favor which could be shown him upon earth. His 
•petition was entertained. He was allowed to enlist in the 
spiritual army, in which he rapidly distinguished himself; 
and at the end of twenty years he had acquired a name 
through France as the ablest member of the world-famed 
fraternity. 

It was at this time, somewhere about 1174, that Henry 
II. conceived the notion of introducing the Carthusians into 
England. In the premature struggle to which he had com- 
mitted himself with the Church, he had been hopelessly 
worsted. The constitutions of Clarendon had been torn in 
pieces. He had himself, of his own accord, done penance 
at the shrine of the murdered Becket. The haughty sov- 
ereign of England, as a symbol of the sincerity of his sub- 
mission, had knelt in the chapter-house of Canterbury, pre- 
senting voluntarily there his bare shoulders to be flogged by 
the monks. His humiliation, so far from degrading him, 
had^restored him to the affection of his subjects, and his en- 
deavor thenceforward was to purify and reinvigorate the 
proud institution against which he had too rashly matched 
his strength. 



60 A Bishop of the Twelfth Oeiitary. 

In pursuance of his policy he had applied to the Char- 
treuse for assistance, and half a dozen monks, among them 
])rother Einard whose Denmark mission was exchanged for 
the English, had been sent over and established at Witham, 
a villaofe not flir from Frome in Somersetshire. Sufficient 
pains had not been taken to prepare for their reception. 
The Carthusians were a solitary order, and required exclu- 
sive possession of the estates set apart for their use. The 
Saxon population were still in occupation of their holdings, 
and being crown tenants, saw themselves threatened with 
eviction in favor of foreigners. Quarrels had arisen and ill- 
feeling, and the Carthusians, proud as the proudest of nobles, 
and considering that in coming to England they were rather 
conferring favors than receiving them, resented the being 
compelled to struggle for tenements which they had not 
sought or desired. The first prior threw up liis office and 
returned to the Chartreuse. The second died immediately 
after of chagrin and disgust ; and the king, who was then 
in Normandy, heard to his extreme mortification that the 
remaining brethren were threatening to take staff in hand 
and march back to their homes. The Count de Maurienne, 
to whom he communicated his distress, mentioned Hugo's 
name to him. It was determined to send for Hugo, and 
Fitzjocelyn, Bishop of Bath, with other venerable persons, 
carried the invitation to the Chartreuse. 

To Hugo himself, meanwhile, as if in preparation for the 
destiny which was before him, a singular experience was at 
that moment occurring. He was now about forty years old. 
It is needless to say that he had duly practiced the usual 
austerities prescribed by his rule. Whatever discipline 
could do to kill the carnal nature in him had been carried 
out to its utmost harshness. He was a man, however, of 
great physical strength. His flesh was not entirely dl^ad, 
and he was going where superiority to worldly temptation 
would be specially required. Just before Fitzjocelyn ar- 
rived he was assailed suddenly by emotions so extremely 



A Bishop of the Twelfth Century. 61 

violent that he said he would rather face the pains of 
Gehenna than encounter them again. His mind was 
unaffected, but the devil had him at advantage in his sleep. 
He 23rayed, he flogged himself, he fasted, he confessed ; still 
Satan was allowed to buffet him, and though he had no fear 
for his soul, he thought his body would die in the struggle. 
One night in particular the agony reached its crisis. He 
lay tossing on his uneasy pallet, the angel of darkness try- 
ing with all his allurements to tempt his conscience into 
acquiescence in evil. An angel from above appeared to 
enter the cell as a spectator of the conflict. Hugo imagined 
that he sprung to him, clutched him, and wrestled like Jacob 
with him to extort a blessing, but could not succeed ; and at 
last he sank exhausted on the ground. In the sleejD or the 
unconsciousness which followed, an aged prior of the Char- 
treuse, who had admitted him as a boy to the order, had 
died, and had since been canonized, seemed to lean over him 
as he lay, and inquired the cause of his distress. He said 
that he was afflicted to agony by the law of sin that was in 
his members, and unless some one aided him he would per- 
ish. The saint drew from his breast what appeared to be a 
knife, opened his body, drew a fiery mass of something from 
the bowels, and flung it out of the door. He awoke and 
found that it was morning, and that he was perfectly cured. 

" Did you never feel a return of these motions of the 
flesh ? " asked Adam, when Hugo related the story to him. 

" Not never," Hugo answered, " but never to a degree 
that gave me the slightest trouble." 

" I have been particular," wrote Adam afterwards, " to 
relate this exactly as it happened, a false account of it 
having gone abroad that it was the Blessed Virgin who 
appeared instead of the i3rior," and that Hugo was relieved 
by an operation of a less honorable kind. 

Visionary nonsense, the impatient reader may say : and 
had Hugo become a dreamer of the cloister, a persecutor 
like St. Dominic, or a hysterical fanatic like Ignatius Loy- 



62 A Bishop of the Twelfth Centura/. 

ola, we might pass it by as a morbid illusion. But there 
never lived a man to whom the word morbid could be 
applied with less propriety. In the Hugo of Avalon with 
whom we are now to become acquainted, we shall see noth- 
ing but the sunniest cheerfulness, strong masculine sense, 
inflexible purpose, uprightness in word and deed ; with an 
ever-flowing stream of genial and buoyant humor. 

In the story of the temptation, therefore, we do but see 
the final conquest of the selfish nature in him which left his 
nobler qualities free to act, wherever he might find himself. 

Fitzjocelyn anticipating difliculty had brought with him 
the Bishop of Grenoble to support his petition. He was 
received at first with universal clamor. Hugo was the 
brightest jewel of the order; Hugo could not be parted 
with for any prince on earth. He himself, entirely hapjDy 
where he was, anticipated nothing but trouble, but left his 
superiors to decide for him. At length sense of duty pre- 
vailed. The brethren felt that he was a shining light, of 
which the world must not be deprived. The Bishop of 
Grenoble reminded them that Christ had left heaven and 
come to earth for sinners' souls, and that his example ought 
to be imitated. It was arranged that Hugo was to go, and 
a few weeks later he was at Witham. 

He was welcomed there as an angel from heaven. He 
found everything in confusion, the few monks living in wat- 
tled huts in the forest, the village still in possession of its 
old occupants, and bad blood and discontent on all hands. 
The first difficulty was to enter upon the lands without 
wrong to the people, and the history of a large eviction in 
the twelfth century will not be without its instructiveness 
even at the present day. One thing Hugo was at once de- 
cided upon, that the foundation would not flourish if it was 
built upon injustice. He repaired to Henry, and as a first 
step induced him to offer the tenants (crown serfs or vil- 
leins) either entire enfranchisement or farms of equal value, 
on any other of the royal manors, to be selected by them- 



A Bishop of the Twelfth Century. 63 

selves. Some chose one, some the other. The next thing 
was compensation for improvements, houses, farm-buildings, 
and fences erected by the people at their own expense. 
The crown, if it resumed possession, must pay for these or 
wrong would be done. " Unless your majesty satisfy these 
poor men to the last obol," said Hugo to Henry, " we can- 
not take possession." 

The king consented, and the people, when the prior car- 
ried back the news of the arrangement, were satisfied to go. 

But this was not all. Many of them were removing no 
great distance, and could carry with them the materials of 
their houses. Hugo resolved that they should keep these 
things, and again marched off to the court. 

" My lord," said Hugo, " I am but a new comer in your 
realm, and I have already enriched your majesty with a 
quantity of cottages and farm steadings." 

" Riches I could well have spared," said Henry, laughing. 
" You have almost made a beggar of me. What am I to 
do with old huts and rotten timber ? " 

" Perhaps your majesty will give them to me," said 
Hugo. " It is but a trifle," he added, when the king hesi- 
tated. " It is my first request, and only a small one." 

" This is a terrible fellow that we have brought among 
us," laughed the king ; " if he is so powerful with his per- 
suasions, what will he do if he tries force ? Let it be as he 
says. We must not drive him to extremities." 

Thus, with the good-will of all parties, and no wrong 
done to any man, the first obstacles were overcome. The 
villagers went away happy. The monks entered upon their 
lands amidst prayers and blessings, the king himself being 
as pleased as any one at his first experience of the character 
of Prior Hugo. 

Henry had soon occasion to see more of him. He had 
promised to build the monks a house and chapel, but be- 
tween Ireland, and Wales, and Scotland, and his domin- 
ions in France, and his three mutinous sons, he had many 



64 A Bisliop of the Twelfth Century. 

troubles on liis hands. Time passed, and the building was 
not begun, and Hugo's flock grew mutinous once more ; 
twice he sent Henry a reminder, twice came back fair 
words and nothino^ more. The brethren beo;an to hint 
that the prior was afraid of the powers of this world, and 
dared not speak plainly ; and one of them, Brother Gerard, 
an old monk with high blood in his veins, declared that he 
would himself go and tell Henry some unpleasant truths. 
Hugo had discovered in his interview with him that the 
king was no ordinary man, " vir sagacis ingenii, et inscrutab- 
ilis fere animi." He made no opposition, but he proposed 
to go himself along with this passionate gentleman, and he, 
Gerard, and the aged Einard, who was mentioned above, 
went together as a deputation. 

The king received them as " coelestes angelos," — angels 
from heaven. He professed the deepest reverence for their 
characters, and the greatest anxiety to please them, but he 
said nothing precise and determined, and the fiery Gerard 
burst out as he intended. Carthusian monks, it seems, con- 
sidered themselves entitled to speak to kings on^ entirely 
equal terms. " Finish your work or leave it, my lord 
king," the proud Burgundian said. " It shall no more be 
any concern to me. You have a pleasant realm here in 
England, but for myself I prefer to take my leave of you 
and go back to my desert Chartreuse. You give us bread, 
and you think you are doing a great thing for us. We do 
not need your bread. It is better for us to return to our 
Alps. You count money lost which you spend on your 
soul's health ; keep it then, since you love it so dearly. Or 
rather, you cannot keep it ; for you must die and let it go 
to others who will not thank you." 

Hugo tried to check the stream of words, but Gerard and 
Einard were both older than he, and refused to be re- 
strained. 

" Regem videres philosophantem : " the king was appar- 
ently meditating. His face did not alter, nor did he speak 
a word till the Carthusian had done. 



A Bishop of the Twelfth Century. 65 

" And what do you think, my good fellow," he said at 

last, after a pause, looking up and turning to Hugo : " will 

you forsake me too ? " 

"My lord," said Hugo, "I am less desperate than my 

brothers. You have much work upon your hands, and I 

can feel for you. When God shall please you will have 

leisure to attend to us." 

" By my soul," Henry answered, " you are one that I 

will never part with while I live." 

He sent workmen at once to Witham. Cells and chapel 

were duly built. The trouble finally passed away, and the 

Carthusian priory taking root became the English nursery 

of the order, which rapidly spread. 

Hugo himself continued there for eleven years, leavmg it 

from time to time on business of the Church, or summoned, 
as happened more and more frequently, to Henry's pres- 
ence. The king, who had seen his value, who knew that 
he could depend upon him to speak the truth, consulted him 
on the most serious affairs of state, and beginning with 
respect, became familiarly and ardently attached to him. 
Witham however remained his home, and he returned to it 
always as to a retreat of perfect enjoyment. His cell and 
his dole of weekly bread gave him as entire satisfaction as 
the most luxuriously furnished villa could afford to one of 
ourselves ; and long after, when he was called elsewhere, 
and the cares of the great world fell more heavily upon hnn, 
he looked to an annual month at Witham for rest of mind 
and body, and on coming there he would pitch away his 
grand dress and jump into his sheepskin as we moderns put 
on our shooting jackets. 

While he remained prior he lived in perfect simplicity 
and unbroken health of mind and body. The fame of his 
order spread fast, and with its light the inseparable shadow 
of superstition. Witham became a place of pilgrimage : 
miracles were said to be worked by involuntary effluences 
from its occupants. Then and always Hugo thought litlle 
5 



66 A BUhop of the Twelfth Centnrij. 

of miracles, turned his back on them for the most part, and 
discouraged them if not as illusions yet as matters of no con- 
sequence. St. Paul thought one intelligible sentence con- 
taining truth in it was better than a hundred in an unknown 
tongue. The Prior of Witham considered that the only 
miracle worth speaking of was holiness of life. " Little I," 
writes Adam (parvulus ego), " observed that he worked 
many miracles himself, but he paid no attention to them." 
Thus he lived for eleven years with as much rational hap- 
piness as, in his opinion, human nature was capable of ex- 
periencing. When he lay down upon his horse-rug he slept 
like a child, undisturbed, save that at intervals, as if he was 
praying, he muttered a composed Amen. When he awoke 
he rose and went about his ordinary business : cleaning up 
dirt, washing dishes, and such like, being his favorite early 
occupation. 

The Powers, however, — who, according to the Greeks, 
are jealous of human felicity, — thought proper, in due 
time, to disturb the Prior of Witham. Towards the end of 
1183 Walter de Coutances was promoted from the bishop- 
ric of Lincoln to the archbishopric of Pouen. The see lay 
vacant for two years and a half, and a successor had now to 
be provided. A great council was sitting at Ensham on 
business of the realm ; the king riding over every morning 
from Woodstock. A deputation of canons from Lincoln 
came to learn his pleasure for the filling up the vacancy. 
The canons were directed to make a choice for themselves, 
and were unable to agree, for the not unnatural reason that 
each canon considered the fittest person to be himself. 
Some one (Adam does not mention the name) suggested, 
as a way out of the difficulty, the election of Hugo of 
Witham. The canons being rich, well to do, and of the 
modern easy-going sort, laughed at the suggestion of the 
poor Carthusian. They found to their surprise, however, 
that the king was emphatically of the same opinion, and that 
Hugo and nobody else was the person that he intended for 
them. 



A Bishop of the Twelfth Century, 67 

The king's pleasure was theirs. They gave their votes, 
and dispatched a deputation over the downs to command the 
prior's instant presence at Ensham. 

A dithculty rose where it was least expected. Not only 
was the " Nolo episcoj)ari " in Hugo's case a genuine feel- 
ing, not only did he regard worldly promotion as a thing 
not in the least attractive to him ; but, in spite of his regard 
for Henry, he did not believe that the king -was a j)roper 
person to nominate the prelates of the Churcli. He told the 
canons that the election was void. They must return to 
their own cathedral, call the chapter together, invoke the 
Holy Spirit, put the king of England out of their minds, 
and consider rather the King of kings ; and so, and not 
otherwise, proceed with their choice. 

The canons, wide-eyed with so unexpected a reception, 
retired with their answer. Whether they complied with the 
spirit of Hugo's direction may perhaps be doubted. They, 
however, assembled at Lincoln with the proper forms, and 
repeated the election with the external conditions which he 
had prescribed. As a last hope of escape he appealed to 
the Chartreuse, declaring himself unable to accept any office 
without orders from his superiors ; but the authorities there 
forbade him to decline ; and a fresh deputation of canons 
having come for his escort, he mounted his mule with a 
heavy heart, and set out in their company for Winchester, 
where the king was then residing. 

A glimpse of the party we are able to catch upon their 
journey. Though it was seven hundred years since, the 
English September was probably much like what it is at 
present, and the down country cannot have materially 
altered. The canons had their palfreys, richly caparisoned 
with gilt saddle-cloths, and servants, and sumpter horses. 
The bishop elect strapped his wardrobe, his blanket and 
sheepskin, at the back of his saddle. He rode in this way 
resisting remonstrance till close to Winchester, when the 
canons, afraid of the ridicule of the court, slit the leathers 



GS A Bishop of the Twelfth Centwy. 

without his knowing it, and passed his baggage to the ser- 
vants. 

Consecration and installation duly followed, and it was 
supposed that Hugo, a humble monk, owing his promotion 
to the king, would be becomingly grateful ; that he would 
become just a bishojj like anybody else, complying with 
established customs, moving in the regular route, and keep- 
ing the waters smooth. 

All parties were disagreeably, or rather, as it turned out 
ultimately, agreeably surprised. The first intimation which 
he gave that he had a will of his own followed instantly 
upon his admission. Corruption or quasi-corruption had 
gathered already round ecclesiastical appointments. The 
Archdeacon of Canterbury put in a claim for consecration 
fees, things in themselves without meaning or justice, but 
implying that a bishopric was a prize, the lucky winner of 
which was expected to be generous. 

The new prelate held no such estimate of the nature of 
his appointment ; he said he would give as much for his 
cathedral as he had given for his mitre, and left the archdea- 
con to his reflections. 

No sooner was he established and had looked about him, 
than from the poor tenants of estates of the see he heard 
complaints of that most ancient of English grievances, — 
the game laws. Hugo, who himself touched 1:0 meat, was 
not likely to have cared for the chase. He was informed 
that venison must be provided for his installation feast. He 
told his people to take from his park what was necessary, 
— three hundred stags if they pleased, so little he cared for 
preserving them ; but neither was he a man to have inter- 
fered needlessly with the recognized amusements of other 
people. There must have been a case of real oppression, 
or he would not have meddled with such things. The 
offender was no less a person than the head forester of the 
king himself. Hugo, failing to bring him to reason with 
mild methods, excommunicated him, and left him to carry 



A Bishop of the Twelfth Centura/. 69 

his complaints to Henry. It happened that a rich stall was 
at the moment vacant at Lincoln. The king wanted it for 
one of his courtiers, and gave the bishop an opportunity of 
redeeming his first offense by asking for it as a favor to him- 
self. Henry was at Woodstock ; the bishop, at the moment, 
was at Dorchester, a place in his diocese thirteen miles off. 
On receiving Henry's letter the bishop bade the messenger 
carry back for answer that prebendal stalls were not for 
courtiers but for priests. The king must find other means 
of rewarding temporal services. Henry, with some experi- 
ence of the pride of ecclesiastics, was unprepared for so 
abrupt a message, — Becket himself had been less insolent, 
— and as he had been personally kind to Hugo, he was 
hurt as well as offended. He sent again to desire him to 
come to Woodstock, and prepared, when he arrived, to show 
him that he was seriously displeased. Then followed one 
of the most singular scenes in English history, — a thing 
veritably true, which oaks still standing in Woodstock Park 
may have witnessed. As soon as word was brought that 
the bishop was at the park gate, Henry mounted his horse, 
rode with his retinue into a glade in the forest, where he 
alighted, sat down upon the ground with his people, and in 
this position prepared to receive the criminal. The bishop 
approached, — no one rose or spoke. He saluted the king ; 
there was no answer. Pausing for a moment, he approached, 
pushed aside gently an earl who was sitting at Henry's side, 
and himself took his place. Silence still continued. At last 
Henry, looking up, called for a needle and thread ; he had 
hurt a finger of his left hand. It was wrapped with a strip 
of linen rag, the end was loose, and he began to sew. The 
bishop watched him through a few stitches, and then, with 
the utmost composure, said to him, — " Quam similis es 
modo cognatis tuis de Falesia," — " Your highness now re- 
minds me of your cousins of Falaise." The words sounded 
innocent enough, — indeed, entirely unmeaning. Alone of 
the party, Henry understood the allusion ; and, overwhelmed 



70 A Bishop of the Twelfth Century. 

by the astonishing impertinence, he clenched his hands, 
struggled hard to contain himself, and then rolled on the 
gromid in convulsions of laughter. 

" Did you hear," he said to his people when at last he 
found words, " did you hear how this wretch insulted us ? 
The blood of my ancestor the Conqueror, as you know, 
was none of the purest. His mother was of Falaise, which 
is famous for its leather work, and when this mocking 
gentlemen saw me stitching my finger, he said I was show- 
ing my parentage." 

" My good sir," he continued, turning to Hugo, " what 
do you mean by excommunicating my head forester, and 
when I make a small request of you, why is it that you not 
only do not come to see me, but do not send me so much as 
a civil answer ? " 

" I know myself," answered Hugo, gravely, " to be in- 
debted to your highness for my late promotion. I con- 
sidered that your highness's soul would be in danger if I 
was found wanting in the discharge of my duties ; and 
therefore it was that I used the censures of the Church 
when I held them necessary, and that I resisted an im- 
proper attempt on your part upon a stall in my cathedral. 
To wait on you on such a subject I thought superfluous, 
since your highness approves, as a matter of course, of 
whatever is rightly ordered in your realm." 

What could be done with such a bishop ? No one knew 
better than Henry the truth of what Hugo was saying, or 
the worth of such a man to himself. He bade Hugo pro- 
ceed with the forester as he pleased. Hugo had him pub- 
licly whipped, then absolved him, and gave him his blessing, 
and found in him ever after a fast and faithful friend. The 
courtiers asked for no more stalls, and all was well. 

In Church matters in his own diocese he equally took 
his own way. Nothing could be more unlike than Hugo 
to the canons whom he found in possession ; yet he some- 
how bent them all to his will, or carried their wills with 



A Bishop of the Twelfth Century. 71 

his own. " Never since I came to the diocese," he said to 
his chaplain, " have I had a quarrel with my chapter. It 
is not that I am easy-going — sum enim revera pipere 
mordacior: pepper is not more biting than I can be. I 
often fly out for small causes ; but they take me as they 
find me. There is not one who distrusts my love for him, 
nor one by whom I do not believe myself to be loved." 

At table this hardest of monks was the most agreeable 
of companions. Though no one had practiced abstinence 
more severe, no one less valued it for its own sake, or had 
less superstition or foolish sentiment about it. It was, and 
is, considered sacrilege in the Church of Rome to taste 
food before saying mass. Hugo, if he saw a priest who 
was to officiate exhausted for want of support, and likely to 
find a difiiculty in getting through his work, would order 
him to eat as a point of duty, and lectured him for want of 
faith if he affected to be horrified. 

Like all genuine men, the bishop was an object of special 
attraction to childi'en and animals. The little ones in 
every house that he entered were always found clinging 
about his legs. Of the attachment of other creatures to 
him, there was one very singular instance. About the 
time of his installation there appeared on the mere at Stow 
Manor, eight miles from Lincoln, a swan of unusual size, 
which drove the other male birds from off the water. Ab- 
bot Adam, who frequently saw the bird, says that he was 
curiously marked. The bill was saffron instead of black, 
with a saffron tint on the plumage of the head and neck ; 
and the abbot adds, he was as much larger than other 
swans as a swan is larger than a goose. This bird, on the 
occasion of the bishop's first visit to the manor, was brought 
to him to be seen as a curiosity. He was usually unman- 
ageable and savage ; but the bishop knew the way to his 
heart ; fed him, and taught him to poke his head into the 
pockets of his frock to look for bread crumbs, which he did 
not fail to find there. Ever after he seemed to know in- 



72 A Bisliop of the Twelfth Century. 

stinctively when the bishop was expected, and flew trumpet- 
ing up and down the lake, slapping the water with his 
wings ; when the horses approached, he would march out 
upon the grass to meet them ; strutted at the bishop's side, 
and would sometimes follow him up-stairs. 

It was a miracle of course to the general mind, though 
explicable enough to those who have observed the physical 
charm which men who take pains to understand animals 
are able to exercise over them. 

To relate, or even to sketch, Bishop Hugo's public life 
in the fourteen years that he was at Lincoln, would be 
beyond the compass of a magazine article. The materials 
indeed do not exist : for Abbot Adam's life is but a col- 
lection of anecdotes ; and out of them it is only possible 
here to select a few at random. King Henry died two 
years after the scene at Woodstock ; then came the acces- 
sion of Coeur de Lion, the Crusade, the king's imprison- 
ment in Austria, and the conspiracy of John. Glimpses 
can be caught of the bishop in these stormy times quelling 
insurgent mobs — in Holland, perhaps Holland in Lincoln- 
shire, with his brother William of Avalon, encountering 
a military insurrection ; single-handed and unarmed, over- 
awing a rising at Northampton, when the citizens took 
possession of the great church, and swords were flashing, 
and his attendant chaplains fled terrified, and hid themselves 
behind the altars. 

These things however, glad as we should be to know 
more of them, the abbot merely hints at, confining himself 
to subjects more interesting to the convent recluses for 
whose edification he was writing. 

But in whatever circumstances he lets us see the bishop, 
it is always the same simple, brave, unpretending, wise 
figure, one to whom Nature had been lavish of her fairest 
gifts, and whose training, to modern eyes so unpromising, 
had brought out all that was best in him. 

Am(3ng the most deadly disorders which at that time pre- 



A Bishop of the Twelfth Qentury. 73 

vailed in England was leprosy. The wretched creatures 
afflicted with so loathsome a disease were regarded with a 
superstitious terror : as the objects in some special way of 
the wrath of God. They were outlawed from the fellow- 
ship of mankind, and left to perish in misery. 

The bishop, who had clearer views of the nature and 
causes of human suffering, established hospitals on his estate 
for these poor victims of undeserved misery, whose misfor 
tunes appeared to him to demand special care and sympathy. 
To the horror of his attendants, he persisted in visiting 
them himself ; he washed their sores with his own hands, 
kissed them, prayed over them, and consoled them. 

" Pardon, blessed Jesus," exclaims Adam, " the unhappy 
soul of him who tells the story! when I saw my master 
touch those bloated and livid faces ; when I saw him kiss 
the bleared eyes or eyeless sockets, I shuddered with dis- 
gust. But Hugo said to me that these afliicted ones were 
flowers of Paradise, pearls in the coronet of the Eternal 
King waiting for the coming of their Lord, who in his own 
time would change their forlorn bodies into the likeness of 
his own glory." 

He never altered his own monastic habits. He never 
parted with his hair shirt, or varied from the hardness of 
the Carthusian rule ; but he refused to allow that it pos- 
sessed any particular sanctity. Men of the world affected 
regret sometimes to him that they were held by duty to a 
secular life when they would have preferred to retire into a 
monastery. The kingdom of God, he used to answer, was 
not made up of monks and hermits. God, at the day of 
judgment, would not ask a man why he had not been a 
monk, but why he had not been a Christian. Charity in 
the heart, truth in the tongue, chastity in the body were the 
virtues which God demanded : and chastity, to the astonish- 
ment of his clergy, he insisted, was to be found as well 
among the married as the unmarried. The wife was as 
honorable as the virgin. He allowed women (Adam's pen 



74 A Bishop of the Twelfth Centura/. 

trembles as he records it) to sit at his side at dinner ; and 
had been known to touch and even to embrace them. 
" Woman," he once said remarkably, " has been admitted to 
a higher privilege than man. It has not been given to man 
to be the father of God. To woman it has been given to 
be God's mother." 

Another curious feature about him was his eagerness to 
be present, whenever possible, at the burial of the dead. He 
never allowed any one of his priests to bury a corpse if he 
were himself within reach. If a man had been good, he 
said he deserved to be honored. If he had been a sinner, 
there was the more reason to help him. He would allow 
nothing to interfere with a duty of this kind ; and in great 
cities he would spend whole days by the side of graves. At 
Rouen once he was engaged to dinner with King Richard 
himself, and kept the king and the court waiting for him 
while he was busy in the cemetery. A courtier came to 
fetch him. " The king needn't wait," he only said. " Let 
him go to dinner in the name of God. Better the king 
dine without my company, than that I leave my Master's 
work undone." 

Gentle and affectionate as he shows himself in such traits 
as these, still, as he said, he was pipere mordacior — more 
biting than pepper. When there was occasion for anger 
there was fierce lightning in him ; he was not afraid of the 
highest in the land. 

The cause for which Becket died was no less dear to 
Hugo. On no pretext would he permit innovation on the 
Church's privileges, and he had many a sharp engagement 
with the primate, Ai-chbishop Hubert, who was too com- 
plaisant to the secular power. An instance or two may be 
taken at random. There was a certain Richard de Wavre 
in his diocese, a younger son of a noble house, who was in 
deacon's orders, but, the elder brother having died childless, 
was hoping to relapse into the lay estate. This Richard in 
some one of the many political quarrels of the day brought 



A Bishop of the Twelfth Century. 75 

a charge of treason against Sir Reginald de Argentun, one 
of the bishop's knights. As he was a clerk in orders the 
bishop forbade him to apjjear as prosecutor in a secular 
court or cause. Coeur de Lion and Archbishop Hubert 
ordered him to go on. The bishop suspended him for con- 
tumacy, the archbishop removed the suspension. The bishop 
pronounced sentence of excommunication ; the archbishop, 
as primate and legate, issued letters of absolution, which 
Richard flourished triumphantly in the bishop's face. 

" If my lord archbishop absolve you a hundred times," 
was Hugo's answer, " a hundred times I will excommuni- 
cate you again. Regard my judgment as you will, I hold 
you bound while you remain impenitent." Death ended 
the dispute. The wretched Richard was murdered by one 
of his servants. 

Another analogous exploit throws curious light on the 
habits of the times. Riding once through St. Alban's he 
met the sheriff with the posse comitatus escorting a felon to 
the gallows. The prisoner threw himself before the bishop 
and claimed protection. The bishop reined in his horse and 
asked who the man was. 

" My lord," said the sheriff shortly, " it is no affair of 
yours ; let us pass and do our duty." 

" Eh ! " then said Hugo. " Blessed be God ; we will see 
about that ; make over the man to me ; and go back and 
tell the judges that I have taken him from you." 

" My lords judges," he said, when they came to remon- 
strate, " I need not remind you of the Church's privileges 
of sanctuary ; understand that where the bishop is, the 
Church is. He who can consecrate the sanctuary carries 
with him the sacredness of the sanctuary." 

The humiliation of an English king at Becket's tomb had 
been a lesson too severe and too recent to be forgotten. 
" We may not dispute with you," the judges replied ; " if 
you choose to let this man go we shall not oj^pose you, but 
you must answer for it to the king's highness." 



76 A Bishop of the Twelfth Century. 

" So be it," answered Hugo, " you have spoken well. I 
charge myself with your jDrisoner. The responsibility be 
mine." 

There was probably something more in the case than 
appears on the surface. The sanctuary system worked in 
mitigation of a law which in itself was frightfully cruel, and 
there may have been good reason why the life of the poor 
wretch should have been spared. The bisho^D set him free. 
It is to be hoped that " he sinned no more." 

The common-sense view which the bishop took of mira- 
cles has been already spoken of, but we may give one or 
two other illustrations of it. Doubtless, he did not disbe- 
lieve in the possibility of miracles, but he knew how much 
imposture passed current under the name, and whether true 
or false he never missed a chance of checking or affronting 
superstition. 

Stopping once in a country town on a journey from Paris 
to Troyes, he invited the parish priest to dine with him. 
The priest declined, but came in the evening to sit and talk 
with the chaplains. He was a lean old man, dry and shriv- 
eled to the bones, and he told them a marvelous story 
which he bade them report to their master. 

Long ago, he said, when he was first ordained priest, he 
fell into mortal sin, and without having confessed or done 
penance he had presumed to officiate at the altar. He was 
skeptical too, it seemed, a premature Voltairian. " Is it 
credible," he had said to himself when consecrating the 
host, " that I, a miserable sinner, can manufacture and 
handle and eat the body and blood of God ? " He was 
breaking the wafer at the moment ; blood flowed at the 
fracture — the part which was in his hand became flesh. He 
dropped it terrified into the chalice, and the wine turned in- 
stantly into blood. The precious things were preserved. 
The priest went to Rome, confessed to the Pope himself, 
and received absolution. The faithful now flocked from all 
parts of France to adore the mysterious substances which 



A Bishop of the Ttvelfth Century. 7T 

were to be seen in the parish church ; iind the priest trusted 
that he might be honored on the following day by the pres- 
ence of Bishop Hugo and his retinue. 

The chaplains rushed to the bishop open-mouthed, eager 
to be allowed to refresh their souls on so divine a spectacle. 

" In the name of God," he said quietly, " let unbelievers 
go rushing after signs and wonders. What have we to do 
with such things who partake every day of the heavenly 
sacrifice ? " He dismissed the priest wdth his blessing, 
giving him the benefit of a doubt, though he probably 
suspected him to be a rogue, and forbade his chaplains 
most strictly to yield to idle curiosity. 

He was naturally extremely humorous, and humor in 
such men will show itself sometimes in playing with things, 
in the sacredness of which they may believe fully notwith- 
standing. It has been said, indeed, that no one has any 
real faith if he cannot afford to play with it. 

Among the relics at Fecamp, in Normandy, was a so- 
called bone of Mary Magdalene. This precious jewel was 
kept with jealous care. It was deposited in a case, and 
within the case was double wrapped in silk. Bishop Hugo 
was taken to look at it in the presence of a crowd of 
monks, abbots, and other dignitaries ; mass had been said 
first as a preparation ; the thing was then taken out of its 
box and exhibited, so far as it could be seen through its 
envelope. The bishop asked to look at the bone itself ; and 
no one venturing to touch it, he borrowed a knife and 
calmly slit the covering. He took it up, whatever it may 
have been, gazed at it, raised it to his lips as if to kiss it, 
and then suddenly with a strong grip of his teeth bit a 
morsel out of its side. A shriek of sacrilege rang through 
the church. Looking round quietly the bishop said, " Just 
now we were handling in our unworthy fingers the body 
of the Holy One of all. We passed Him between our 
teeth and down into our stomach ; why may we not do the 
like with the members of his saints ? " 



78 A Bishop of the Twelfth Century. 

We have left to tlie last the most curious of all the 
stories connected with this singular man. We have seea 
him with King Henry ; we will now follow him into the 
presence of Cceur de Lion. 

Richard, it will be remembered, on his return from his 
captivity, plunged into war with Philip of France, carrying 
out a quarrel which had commenced in the Holy Land. 
The king, in distress for money, had played tricks with 
Church patronage which Hugo had firmly resisted. After- 
wards an old claim on Lincoln diocese for some annual 
services was suddenly revived, which had been pretermitted 
for sixty years. The arrears for all that time were called 
for and exacted, and the clergy had to raise among them- 
selves three thousand marks : hard measure of this kind 
perhaps induced Hugo to look closely into further demands. 

Li 1197, when Richard was in Normandy, a pressing 
message came home from him for supplies. A council was 
held at Oxford, when Archbishop Hubert, who was Chan- 
cellor, required each prelate and great nobleman in the 
king's name to provide three hundred knights at his own 
cost to serve in the war. The Bishop of London sup- 
ported the primate. The Bishop of Lincoln followed. 
Being a stranger, he said, and ignorant on his arrival of 
English laws, he had made it his business to study them. 
The see of Lincoln, he was aware, was bound to military 
service, but it was service in England and not abroad. 
The demand of the king was against the liberties which 
he had sworn to defend, and he would rather die than be- 
tray them. 

The Bishop of Salisbury, gathering courage from Hugo's 
resistance, took the same side. The council broke up in 
confusion, and the archbishop wrote to Richard to say that 
he was unable to raise the required force, and that the 
Bishop of Lincoln was the cause. Richard, who, with 
most noble qualities, had the temper of a fiend, replied 
instantly with an order to seize and confiscate the property 



A Bishop of the Twelfth Century. 79 

of the rebellious prelates. The Bishop of Salisbury was 
brought upon his knees, but Hugo, fearless as ever, swore 
that he would excommunicate any man who dared to 
execute the king's command ; and as it was known that he 
would keep his word, the royal officers hesitated to act. 
The king wrote a second time, more fiercely, threatening 
death if they disobeyed; and the bishop, not wishing to 
expose them to trouble on his account, determined to go 
over and encounter the tempest in person. 

At Rouen, on his way to Roche d'Andeli, where Richard 
was lying, he was encountered by the Earl Marshal and 
Lord Albemarle, who implored him to send some concilia- 
tory message by them, as the king was so furious that they 
feared he might provoke the anger of God by some violent 
act. 

The bishop declined their assistance. He desired them 
merely to tell the king that he was coming. They hurried 
back, and he followed at his leisure. The scene that 
ensued was even stranger than the interview already de- 
scribed with Henry in the park at Woodstock. 

Coeur de Lion, when he arrived at Roche d'Andeli, was 
hearing mass in the church. He was sitting in a great 
chair at the opening into the choir, with the Bishops of 
Durham and Ely on either side. Church ceremonials must 
have been conducted with less stiff propriety than at pres- 
ent. Hugo advanced calmly and made the usual obeisance. 
Richard said nothing, but frowned, looked sternly at him 
for a moment, and turned away. 

" Kiss me, my lord king," said the bishop. It was the 
ordinary greeting between the sovereign and the spiritual 
peers. The king averted his face still further. 

" Kiss me, my lord," said Hugo again, and he caught 
Coeur de Lion by the vest and shook him. Abbot Adam 
standing shivering behind. 

" Non meruisti — thou has not deserved it," growled 
Richard. 



80 A Bishop of the Twelfth Century. 

" I have deserved it," replied Hugo, and shook him 
harder. 

Had he shown fear, Coenr de Lion would probably have 
trampled on him, but who could resist such marvelous 
audacity ? The kiss was given. The bishop passed up to 
the altar and became absorbed in the service, Coeur de 
Lion curiously watching him. 

When mass was over there was a formal audience, but 
the result of it was decided already. Hugo declared his 
loyalty in everything, save what touched his duty to God. 
The king yielded, and threw the blame of the quarrel on 
the too complaisant primate. 

Even this was not all. The bishop afterwards requested 
a private interview. He told Richard solemnly that he 
was uneasy for his soul, and admonished him, if he had 
anything on his conscience, to confess it. 

The king said he was conscious of no sin, save of a cer- 
tain rage against his French enemies. 

" Obey God ! " the bishop said, " and God will humble 
your enemies for you ; and you for your part take heed 
you offend not Him or hurt your neighbor. I speak in 
sadness, but rumor says you are unfaithful to your queen.'* 

The lion was tamed for the moment. The king acknowl- 
edged nothing, but restrained his passion, only observing 
afterwards, " If all bishops were like my lord of Lincoln, not 
a prince among us could lift his head against them." 

The trouble was not over. Hugo returned to England 
to find his diocese in confusion. A bailiff of the Earl of 
Leicester had taken a man out of sanctuary in Lincoln and 
had hung him. Instant excommunication followed. The 
bishop compelled every one who had been concerned in the 
sacrilege to repair, stripped naked to the waist, to the spot 
where the body was buried, to dig it up, putrid as it was, and 
carry it on their shoulders round the town, to halt at each 
church door to be flogged by the priests belonging to the 
place, and then with their own hands to rebury the man in 
the cemetery from which he had been originally carried off. 



A Bishop of the Twelfth Century. 81 

Fresh demands for money in another but no less h'regu- 
lar form followed from the king. There was again a coun- 
cil in London. The archbishop insisted that Hugo should 
levy a subsidy ujjon his clergy. 

" Do you not know, my lord," the primate said, " that the 
king is as thirsty for money as a man with the dropsy for 
water ? " 

" His majesty may be dropsical for all that I know," 
Hugo answered, " but I will not be the water for him to 
swallow." 

Once more he started for Normandy, but not a second 
time to try the effect of his presence on Cceur de Lion. 
On approaching Angers he was met by Sir Gilbert de Lacy 
with the news that the Lion-heart was cold. Richard had 
been struck by an arrow in the trenches at Chaluz. The 
wound had mortified, and he was dead. He was to be 
buried at Fontevrault, but the country was in the wildest 
confusion. The roads were patrolled by banditti, and De 
Lacy strongly advised the bishop to proceed no further. 

Hugo's estimate of danger was unlike De Lacy's. "J 
have more fear," he said, " of failing through cowardice in 
my duty to my lord and prince. If the thieves take mj 
horse and clothes from me, I can walk, and walk the liglite?. 
If they tie me fast I cannot help myself." 

Paying a brief visit to Queen Berengaria, at Beaufort 
Abbey, on the way, he reached Fontevrault on Palm Sun- 
day, the day of the funeral, and was in time to pay the last 
honors to the sovereign whom he had defied and yet loved 
so dearly. 

His own time was also nearly out, and this hurried sketch 
must also haste to its end. One more scene, however, re- 
mains to be described. 

To Henry and Richard, notwithstanding their many 
faults, the bishop was ardently attached. For their sakes^ 
and for his country's, he did what lay in him to influence 
for good the brother who was to succeed to the throne. 



82 A Bishop of the Twelfth Century. 

At tlie time of Richard's death, John was with his nephew 
Arthur in Brittany. That John and not Arthur must take 
Richard's jjlace the bishop seems to have assumed as una- 
voidable ; Arthur was but ten years old, and the times were 
too rough for a regency. John made haste to Fontevrault, 
receiving on his way the allegiance of many of the barons. 
After the funeral he made a profusion of promises to the 
Bishop of Lincoln as to his future conduct. 

The bishop had no liking for John. He knew him to 
have been paltry, false, and selfish. 

" I trust you mean what you say," he said in reply. 
" Nostis quia satis aversor mendacium, — you know that I 
hate lying." 

John produced an amulet which he wore round his neck 
with a chain. That he seemed to think would help him to 
walk straight. 

The bishop looked at it scornfully. " Do you trust in a 
senseless stone ? " he said. " Trust in the living rock in 
heaven, — the Lord Jesus Christ. Anchor your hopes in 
Him, and He will direct you." 

On one side of the church at Fontevrault was a celebrated 
sculpture of the day of judgment. The Judge was on his 
throne ; on liis left were a group of crowned kings led away 
by devils to be hurled into the smoking pit. Hugo pointed 
significantly to them. " Understand," he said, " that those 
men are going into unending torture. Think of it, and let 
your wisdom teach you the prospects of princes who, while 
they govern men, are unable to rule themselves, and 
become slaves in hell through eternity. Fear this, I say, 
while there is time. The hour will come when it will have 
been too late." 

John affected to smile, pointed to the good kings on the 
other side, and declared with infinite volubility, that he 
would be found one of those. 

The fool's nature, however, soon showed itself. Hugo 
took leave of him with a foreboding heart, paid one more 



A Bishop of the Twelfth Century, 83 

bright brief visit in the following year to his birthplace in 
the south, and then returned to England to die. He had 
held liis see but fourteen years, and was no more than sixty- 
five. His asceticism had not impaired his strength. At his 
last visit to the Chartreuse he had distanced all his compan- 
ions on the steep hill-side, but illness overtook him on his 
way home. He arrived in London, at his house in the Old 
Temple, in the middle of September, to feel that he was 
rajDidly dying. Of death itself, it is needless to say, he had 
no kind of fear. " By the holy nut," he used to say, in his 
queer way (" Per sanctam nucem,^ sic enim vice juramenti 
ad formationem verbi inter dum loquebatur "), "by the holy 
nut, we should be worse off if we were not allowed to die 
at all." 

He prepared with liis unvarying composure. As his ill- 
ness increased, and he was confined to his bed, his hair shirt 
hurt him. Twisting into knots, as he shifted from side to 
side, it bruised and wounded his skin. The rules of the 
order would have allowed him to dispense with it, but he 
could not be induced to let it go ; but he took animal food, 
which the doctor prescribed as good for him, and quietly 
and kindly submitted to whatever else was ordered for him. 
He knew, however, that his life was over, and with constant 
confession held himself ready for the change. Great peo- 
ple came about him. John himself came ; but he received 
him coldly. Archbishop Hubert came once ; he did not 
care, perhaps, to return a second time. 

The archbishop, sitting by his bed, after the usual condo- 
lences, suggested that the Bishop of Lincoln might like to 
use the opportunity to repent of any sharp expressions 
which he had occasionally been betrayed into using. As 
the hint was not taken, he referred especially to himself as 
one of those who had something to complain of. 

" Indeed, your grace," replied Hugo, " there have been 
passages of words between us, and I have much to regret 
1 Perhaps f.r " crucem," as we say " by Gad;' to avoid the actual word. 



84 A Bishop of the Twelfth Qentury. 

in relation to them. It is not, however, what I have said 
to your grace, but what I have omitted to say. I have more 
feared to offend your grace than to offend my Father in 
heaven. I have withheld words which I ought to have spo- 
ken, and I have thus sinned against your grace and desire 
your forgiveness. Should it please God to spare my life I 
purpose to amend that fault." 

As his time drew near, he gave directions for the dispo- 
sition of his body, named the place in Lincoln Cathedral 
where he was to be buried, and bade his chaplain make a 
cross of ashes on the floor of his room, lift him from his bed 
at the moment of departure, and place him upon it. 

It was a November afternoon. The choristers of St. 
Paul's were sent for to chant the compline to him for the 
last time. He gave a sign when they were half through. 
They lifted him and laid him on the ashes. The choristers 
sang on, and as they began the Nunc Dimittis he died. 

So parted one of the most beautiful of sj^irits that was 
ever incarnated in human clay. Never was man more 
widely mourned over, or more honored in his death. He 
was taken down to Lincoln, and the highest and the lowest 
alike had poured out to meet the body. A company of 
poor Jews, the ofFscouring of mankind, for whom rack and 
gridiron were considered generally too easy couches, came 
to mourn over one whose justice had sheltered even them. 

John was at Lincoln at the time, and William of Scot- 
land with him ; and on the hill, a mile from the town, two 
kings, three archbishops, fourteen bishops, a hundred ab- 
bots, and as many earls and barons, were waiting to receive 
the sad procession. 

King John and the archbishops took the bier upon their 
shoulders, and waded knee-deep through the mud to the 
cathedral. The lOng of Scotland stood apart in tears. 

It was no vain pomp or unmeaning ceremony, but the 
genuine healthful recognition of human worth. The story 
of Hugo of Lincoln has been too long unknown to us. It 



A Bishop of the Twelfth Cejitury. 85 

deserves a place in every biography of English Worthies. 
It ought to be familiar to every English boy. Such men 
as he were the true builders of our nation's greatness. 
Like the "well-tempered mortar" in old English walls, 
which is hard as the stone itself, their actions and their 
thoughts are the cement of our national organization, and 
bind together yet such parts of it as still are allowed to 
stand. 



FATHER NEWMAN ON " THE GRAMMAR 

OF ASSENT." ' 



Thirty years ago, when the tendencies Romewards of 
the English High Churchmen were first becoming visible, 
Dr. Arnold expressed his own opinion of the reasonableness 
of the movement in the brief sentence, " Believe in the 
Pope ! I would as soon believe in Jupiter." Whether 
belief in Jupiter may hereafter become possible time will 
. show. Necromancy has been revived in spirit-rapping. 
We have converts to Islam among us, and England is the 
chosen recruiting ground of the Mormon Apostles ; while 
this book before us is an attempt on the part of one of the 
ablest of living men to prove that there is no reasonable 
standing ground between Atheism and submission to the 
^ . Holy See — submission not outwardly only, or partially, or 
conditionally, as to an authority which has historical claims 
upon us, and may possibly or probably deserve our alle- 
giance ; but submission complete and entire, the unreserved 
resignation of our moral and spiritual intelligence. The 
Church of Rome, and indeed all religious dogmatic systems, 
are not content with insisting that there is a high proba- 
bility in their favor. They call themselves infallible. 
They demand on our part an absolute certainty that they 
are right, and although they disagree among themselves 
and cannot all be right, and although points on which those 
competent to form an opinion differ, in all other things we 
agree to hold doubtful, they tell us that doubt is a sin, that 

1 An J^ssay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. By John Henry Newman, 
D. D., of the Oratory. London: Burns, Gates & Co., 1870. 



" The G-rammar of Asseyit.'" 87 

we can be and ought to be entirely certain, that a complete 
and utter acquiescence which excludes the possibility of 
mistake is a frame of mind at once possible and philosph- 
ically just. 

It is this seeming paradox which Dr. Newman under- 
takes to prove. His book is composed with elaborate art, 
which is the more striking the more frequently we peruse 
it. Every line, every word tells, from the opening sentence 
to the last. 

His object, from the beginning to the end, is to combat 
and overthrow the position of Locke, that reasonable assent 
is proportioned to evidence, and in its nature, therefore, 
admits of degrees. 

He commences with an analysis of the elementary mental 
processes. He divides " assent " into " notional " and 
" real." He calls notional " assent " that which we give 
to general propositions, scientific, literary, or philosophical ; 
real assent, the conclusions which we form in matters of 
fact, either in our sensible perceptions, or in the api^lication 
of principles to details. He professes to show how, from 
our intellectual constitution, we are unable to rest in proba- 
bilities, and rightly or wrongly pass on to a sensation of 
certainty ; how, notwithstanding exceptions which cannot 
wholly be got over, the conviction that we have hold of the 
truth is an evidence to us that we have hold of it in reality. 
Our beliefs are borne in upon our minds, we know not how, 
directly, indirectly, by reason, by experience, by emotion, 
imagination, and all the countless parts of our complicated 
nature. We may not be able to analyze the grounds of our 
faith, but the faith is none the less justifiable. And thus, 
after being led by the hand through an intricate series of 
mental phenomena, we are landed in the Catholic religion 
as the body of truth which completely commends itself to 
the undistorted intellectual perception. 

The argument is extremely subtle, and often difficult to 
follow, but the difficulty is in the subject rather than in 



88 Father Newman on 

the treatment. Dr. Newman has watched and analyzed 
the processes of the mind with as much care and minute- 
ness as Ehrenberg the organization of animalculae. The 
knotted and tangled skein is disengaged and combed out 
till every fibre of it can be taken up separately and exam- 
ined at leisure ; while all along, hints are let fall from time 
to time, expressions, seemingly casual, illustrations, or no- 
tices of emotional peculiarities, every one of which has its 
purpose, and, to the careful reader, is a sign-post of the 
road on which he is travelling. 

Yet we never read a book, unless the " Ethics " of Spinoza 
be an exception, which is less convincing in proportion to 
its ability. You feel that you are in the hands of a thinker 
of the very highest powers ; yet they are the powers rather 
of an intellectual conjuror than of a teacher who com- 
mands your confidence. You are astonished at the skill 
which is displayed, and unable to exj^lain away the results ; 
but you are conscious all the time that you are played 
with ; you are perplexed, but you are not attracted ; and 
unless you bring a Catholic conclusion ready made with 
you to the study, you certainly will not arrive at it. For it 
is not a simple acknowledgment that Catholicism may per- 
haps be true that is required of us, or even that it is prob- 
ably true, and that a reasonable person might see cause for 
joining the Roman communion. This is not conviction at 
all, nor is it related in any way to a religious frame of 
mind. We are expected rather to feel Catholicism to be 
absolutely necessary and completely true — true, not as an 
inference from argument, but as imposed by a spiritual 
command — true, in a sense which allows no possibility of 
error, and cannot and ought not to endure contradiction. 
" The highest opinion of Protestants in religion," he says, 
" is, generally speaking, assent to a probability, as even 
Butler has been understood or misunderstood to teach, and 
therefore consistent with the toleration of its contradic- 
tory." The creed, therefore, which we are to accej^t is the 



" The Grammar of Assent^ 89 

Romanism with wliich we are familiar in history ; perse- 
cuting from the necessity of the case, for it cannot, where 
it has the power, permit opposition. No heterodox opinion 
can be borne with, or be even heard in its own defense. 
" Since mere argument," Father Newman says elsewhere, 
is not the measure of assent, no one can be called certain 
of a proposition whose mind does not spontaneously and 
promj^tly reject on their first suggestion, as idle, as imper- 
tinent, as sophistical, any objections which are directed 
against its truth. No man is certain of a truth who can 
endure the thought of its contradictory existing or occur- 
ring, and that not from any set purpose or effort to reject it, 
but, as I have said, by the spontaneous action of the intel- 
lect. What is contradictory to it with its apparatus of 
argument, fades out of the mind as fast as it enters it. 

We are familiar with this mode of thought, but it is not 
characteristic of intelligent persons. The Irish magistrate 
having listened to one side of a question declared himself 
satisfied ; he had heard enough, he said, and anything 
further was either superfluous or perplexed his judgment. 
In a criminal trial, when the facts have been known and 
discussed beforehand, both judge and jury, from the con- 
stitution of their minds, must have formed an opinion on 
the merits of the case, which must have amounted often to 
certainty ; but when the prisoner comes before them it 
becomes their duty to dismiss out of their minds every 
prepossession which they may have entertained. Instead 
of rejecting suggestions inconsistent with such preposses- 
sions they are bound to welcome them, and to look for 
them", with the most scrupulous impartiality. The man of 
science is unworthy of his name if he disdains to listen to 
objections to a favorite theory. It is through a conviction 
of the inadequacy of all formulas to cover the facts of na- 
ture, it is by a constant recollection of the fallibility of the 
best instructed intelligence, and by an unintermittent skep- 
ticism which goes out of its way to look for difficulties, 



90 Father Newman on 

that scientific progress has been made possible. So long 
as Father Newman's method prevailed in Europe, every 
branch of practical knowledge was doomed to barrenness. 
Why are we to fall back upon it now, in the one depart- 
ment in which, according to theologians, error is most 
dangerous ? 

To give a sketch of his argument. 

We entertain propositions, he tells us, in three ways — 
we doubt, we draw inferences, and w^e assent. Doubt is, 
of course, the opposite of certainty. Inferences being 
fi'om premises to conclusions are still conditional, for our 
premises may be incorrect or inadequate. Assent, on the 
other hand, is in its nature unconditional ; it means that we 
are quite certain, and know that we cannot be wrong. 

We assent notionally when we accept a general propo- 
sition as undoubtedly true, as that the whole is greater 
than its part, or that the planets move in ellipses, or again, 
when we read a book and intellectually go along with its 
meaning without personally or particularly applying it. 
We assent really to anything which comes home in detail 
to our feelings or our senses, and is directly recognized as 
true by ourselves. Dr. Newman gives a beautiful illus- 
tration : — 

Let us consider, too, how differently young and old are affected 
by the words of some classic author, such as Homer or Horace. 
Passages, which to a boy are but rhetorical commonplaces, 
neither better nor worse than a hundred others which any clever 
writer might supply, which he gets by heart and thinks very 
fine, and imitates, as he thinks, successfully, in his own flowing 
versification, at length come home to him, when long years- have 
passed, and he has had experience of life, and pierce him as if he 
had never before known them, with their sad earnestness and 
vivid exactness. Then he comes to understand how it is that 
lines, the birth of some chance morning or evening at an Ionian 
festival, or among the Sabine hills, have lasted generation after 
generation, for thousands of years, with a power over the mind, 
and a charm, which the current literature of his own day, with 
all its obvious advantages, is utterly unable to rival. 



" The Grammar of AssenV^ 91 

The history, the occujaations, the studies of every man 
provide him with a multitude of assents of this kind. 
Proverbs become as it were realized when we feel the 
application of them. Opinions taken up as notions ac- 
quire the stamp of certainty, and men are only j^roperly 
themselves when their thoughts thus acquire stability and 
they are no longer blown about by gusts of argument. 
Then only they learn to step out firmly with confidence 
and self-reliance. 

Assents, Dr. Newman repeats, differ in kind from in- 
ferences. We may infer from observation the probable 
existence of an intelligent Creator, but we are still far 
from the conviction which is required for practical service, 
and life is not long enough for a religion built on specula- 
tive conclusions. Life is for action. We cannot wait for 
proof, or we shall never begin to obey. " If we insist on 
proof for everything we shall never come to action. . . . 
To act we must assume, and that assumption is fiiith. . . . 
If we commence with scientific knowledge and argument- 
ative proof, or lay any great stress uj)on it as the basis of 
personal Christianity, or attempt to make men moral or 
religious by libraries and museums, let us in consistency 
take chemists for our cooks and mineralogists for our 
masons." 

This is perfectly true as regards individual persons. 
The clerk in Eastcheap, as Mr. Carlyle says, cannot be for- 
ever verifying his ready reckoner. Yet the conclusions on 
which we act are nevertheless resting on producible evidence 
somewhere, if we cannot each of us produce it ourselves. 
They are the results of past experience and intellectual 
thought, which are tested, enlarged, or modified by the 
23ractice of successive generations. We accept them confi- 
dently, not from any internal conviction that they are 
necessarily true, but from an inference of another kind, 
that if not true they would have been disproved. The be- 
liever at first hand can always give a reason for the fixith 



92 Father Newman on 

that is in him. He believes, and he knows why he be- 
lieves, and he can produce his reasons in a form which 
shall be convincing to others. The believer at second 
hand believes in his teacher, and can give a reason for 
regarding that teacher as an authority. The mason need 
not himself be a mineralogist, but if the master builder 
who employs him knows nothing of the projDcrties of 
stone, his labor will be thrown away. The cook inherits 
the traditionary rules of his art, but if he introduces 
novelties in food he must either call in the chemist to ad- 
vise him or he will try his experiments at the risk of our 
lives. 

We have not yet reached a point where we differ from 
Father Newman essentially; but we are already on our 
guard against his method. His aim is to make us acknowl- 
edge that in common things we feel a certainty dispropor- 
tioned to the evidence which can be produced to justify it. 
It appears to us, on the contrary, that Locke's position re- 
mains unshaken ; that every sound conviction which we 
have can be traced ultimately to experience, and that the 
tenacity with which we hold it is, or ought to be, propor- 
tioned to the uniformity of that experience. 

From real assents in general we j)ass to assents in mat- 
ters of religion. 

" What is a dogma of faith ? " Father Newman asks, 
" and what is it to believe it ? A dogma is a proposition. 
It stands for a notion or a thing, and to believe it is to give 
the assent of the mind to it as standing for one or the other. 
To give a real assent to it is an act of religion ; to give a 
notional is a theological act. It is discerned, rested in, and 
appropriated as a reality by the religious imagination. It 
is held as a truth by the theological intellect." 

The first of such dogmas or propositions contains " belief 
in God." Father Newman disclaims necessarily the inten- 
tion of proving the reasonableness of this belief. He de- 
nies belief to be the result of argument, and therefore he will 



" The Grammar of Assent^ 93 

not argue. He proposes rather to investigate the mental 
process which the words " I believe in God " imply. Yet 
he cannot escape from the conditions of human thought ; 
and while he will not allow belief to be an inference, he ar- 
gues like anybody else that it follows irresistibly from the 
phenomena of our nature. Nowhere in the English lan- 
guage will be found the reasons for believing in a moral 
power as the supreme ruling force in the universe, drawn 
out more clearly or more persuasively. There are no gra- 
tuitous assumptions — no appeals to the imagination. He 
lays the facts of personal experience before us : he indicates 
the conclusion at which they point : and when the conclu- 
sion is conceded, the obligations of obedience follow. He 
draws the inference though he will not allow it to be an in- 
ference. " Inference," he seems to say, " has no power of 
persuasion and involves no duties." Inference is but a 
graduated probability, and involves the toleration of an op- 
posite opinion. But probability, as Butler says, is the 
guide of our lives, and may involve duties as comj^letely as 
certainty. Has a child no duties to his father because it is 
possible, though infinitely unlikely, that his mother may 
have been unfaithful to her vows ? 

The argument itself stands thus. We regret to do injus- 
tice by compression to its singular lucidity. 

" Can we," Father Newman asks, " give a real assent to 
the proposition that there is one God — not an anima 
mundi merely or an initial force, but God as the word is 
understood by the Theist and the Christian, a personal 
God, the Author and Sustainer of all things — the Moral 
Governor of the world ? " He says that we cap , and that 
we can be certain of it ; that it is a truth which tivery rea- 
sonable person is able and ought to acknowledge. He does 
not look for what has been called scornfully " a clock-mak- 
ing Divinity." The evidences of a contriving intellect in 
nature, of the adaptation of means to ends, weigh but little 
with him. There is no morality in the physical constitu- 



94 Father Newman on 

tion of things. The elements know nothing of good and 
evil ; and we can arrive only at a power adequate to the 
effects which we witness. The water will not rise hiirher 
than its source. The created world is finite, and can tell us 
nothing of an Infinite Creator. The root of religious belief 
lies in the conscience and in the sense of moral obligation. 

I assume (says Father Newman) that Conscience has a legiti- 
mate place among our mental acts ; as really so as the action of 
memory, of reasoning, of imagination, or as the sense of the beau- 
tiful ; that, as there are objects which, when presented to the 
mind, cause it to feel grief, regret, joy, or desire, so there are 
things which excite in us approbation or blame, and which we in 
consequence call right or wrong ; and which, experienced in our- 
selves, kindle in us the specific sense of pleasure or pain, which 
goes by the name of a good or bad conscience. This being taken 
for granted, I shall attempt to show that in this special feeling, 
which follows on the commission of what we call right and wrong, 
lie the materials for the real apjDrehension of a Divine Sovereign 
and Judge. 

The feeling of conscience being, I repeat, a certain keen sensi- 
bility, pleasant or painful, — self-approval and hope, or compunc- 
tion and fear, ^- attendant on certain of our actions, which in 
consequence we call right or wrong, is twofold : it is a moral 
sense, and a sense of duty; a judgment of the reason, and a mag- 
isterial dictate. 

Conscience, it is evident, does not furnish a rule of right 
conduct. It has sometimes been the sanction of crime. 
Sometimes it is at a loss to decide. Sometimes it 'gives 
contradictory answers. Conscience made St. Paul into a 
persecutor. Conscience has made kings into tyrants, and 
subjects into rebels. It is not a rule of right conduct, but 
it is a sanction of right conduct. It assures us that there 
is such a thing as right, and that when we know what it is 
we are bound to do it. " Half the world would be puzzled 
to know what is meant by the moral sense, but every one 
knows what is meant by a good or bad conscience. Con- 
science is ever forcing us on by threats and by promises, that 



" Tlie G-rammar of Assent.''^ 95 

we must follow the right and avoid the wrong : so far it is 
one and the same in the mind of every one, whatever be its 
particular errors in particular minds as to the acts which 

it orders to be done or to be avoided It does 

not repose in itself like the sense of beauty It 

vaguely reaches forward to something beyond self, and 
dimly discerns a sanction higher than self for its decisions, as 
evidenced in that keen sense of obligation and resj)onsibility 
which informs them. And hence it is that we are accus- 
tomed to speak of conscience as a voice, a term which we 
never should think of applying to the sense of the beautiful : 
and moreover a voice or the echo of a voice imperative and 
constraining, like no other dictate in the whole of our ex- 
perience." 

Now what does this imply ? Father Newman introduces 
a subtle distinction of which we hesitate to acknowledge the 
force. Conscience, he says, differs from the intellectual 
senses, from common sense, from taste, from sense of 
expedience, and the like, in being always " emotional." 
"Affections are correlative with persons, and always in- 
volve the recognition of a living object towards which they 
are directed." This is to infer too much ; there is such a 
thinoj as love of o;ood for its own sake. But leaving refine- 
ments and looking at these phenomena as facts of experi- 
ence, they seem to us to carry Father Newman's main con- 
clusion with them. The presence of a moral sense in our- 
selves presumes a moral nature in the power which has 
called us into existence. It is impossible to conceive, as 
Mr. Carlyle says, " that these high faculties should have 
been put into us by a Being that had none of its own." 

Father Newman continues : — 

K, as is the case, we feel responsibility, are ashamed, are fright- 
ened, at transgressing the voice of conscience, this implies that 
there is One to whom we are responsible, before Avhom we are 
ashamed, whose claims upon us we fear. If, on doing wrong, we 
feel the same tearful, broken-hearted sorrow which overwhelms 



96 Father Newman on 

us on hurting a mother; if, on doing right, we enjoy the same 
sunny serenity of mind, the same soothing, satisfactory delight 
which follows on our receiving praise from a father, we certainly 
have within us the image of some person, to whom our love and 
veneration look, in whose smile we find our happiness, for whom 
we yearn, towards whom we direct our pleadings, in whose 
anger we are troubled and waste away. These feelings in us are 
such as require for their exciting cause an intelligent being : we 
are not affectionate towards a stone, nor do we feel shame before 
a horse or a dog ; we have no remorse or compunction on break- 
ing mere human law : yet, so it is, conscience excites all these 
painful emotions, confusion, foreboding, self-condemnation ; and, 
on the other hand, it sheds upon us a deep peace, a sense of 
security, a resignation, and a hope, which there is no sensible, no 
earthly object to elicit. " The wicked flees, when no one pur- 
sue th ; " then why does he flee ? whence his terror ? Who is it 
that he sees in solitude, in darkness, in the hidden chambers of 
his heart ? If the cause of these emotions does not belong to this 
visible world, the Object to which his perception is directed must 
be Supernatural and Divine ; and thus the phenomena of Con- 
science, as a dictate, avail to impress the imagination with the 
picture of a Supreme Governor, a Judge, holy, just, powerful, all- 
seeing, retributive, and is the creative principle of religion, as the 
moral sense is the principle of ethics. 

As it is here that our acquiescence in Father Newman's 
reasoning comes to an end, and v^e henceforth part com- 
pany with him, we add one more extract on the same sub- 
ject, an illustration of the growth of religious feeling, from 
the history of the mind of a child : — 

The child keenly understands that there is a difference be- 
tween right and wrong ; and when he has done what he believes 
to be wrong, he is conscious that he is offending One to whom 
he is amenable, whom he does not see, who sees him. His mind 
reaches forward with a strong presentiment to the thought of 
a Moral Governor, sovereign over him, mindful, and just. It 
comes to him like an impulse of nature to entertain it. 

It is my wish to take an ordinary child, but one who is safe 
from influences destructive of his religious instincts. Supposing 
h'"^ has offended his parents, he will all alone and without effort. 



" The Grammar of Assent^' 97 

as if it were the most natural of acts, place himself in the pres- 
ence of God, and beg of Him to set him right Avith them. Let 
us consider how much is contained in this simple act. First, it 
involves the impression on his mind of an unseen Being with 
whom he is in immediate relation, and that relation so familiar 
that he can address Him whenever he himself chooses; next, of 
One whose good-will towards him he is assured of, and can take 
for granted, — nay, who loves him better, and is nearer to him, 
than his parents ; further, of One who can hear him, wherever 
he happens to be, and who can read his thoughts, for his prayer 
need not be vocal ; lastly, of One who can effect a critical change 
in the state of feeling of others towards him. That is, we shall 
not be wrong in holding that this child has in his mind the im- 
age of an Invisible Being, who exercises a particular providence 
among us, who is present everywhere, who is heart-reading, 
heart-changing, ever-accessible, open to impetration. A¥hat a 
strong and intimate vision of God must he have already attained, 
if, as I have supposed, an ordinary trouble of mind has the spon- 
taneous effect of leading him for consolation and aid to an In- 
visible Personal Power ! 

Moreover, this image brought before his mental vision is the 
image of One who by implicit threat and promise commands cer- 
tain things which he, the same child, coincidently, by the same 
act of his mind approves ; which receives the adhesion of his 
moral sense and judgment, as right and good. It is the image of 
One who is good, inasmuch as enjoining and enforcing what is 
right and good, and who, in consequence, not only excites in the 
child hope and fear, — nay (it may be added), gratitude towards 
Him, as giving a law and maintaining it by reward and punish- 
ment, — but kindles in him love towards Him, as giving him a 
good law, and therefore as being good Himself, for it is the prop- 
erty of goodness to kindle love, or rather the very object of love 
is goodness ; and all those distinct elements of the moral law, 
which the typical child, whom I am supposing, more or less con- 
sciously loves and approves, — truth, purity, justice, kindness, 
and the like, — are but shapes and aspects of goodness. And 
having in his degree a sensibility towards them all, for the sake 
of them all he is moved to love the Lawgiver who enjoins them 
upon him. And, as he can contemplate these qualities and their 
manifestations under the common name of goodness, he is pre- 
7 



98 Father Newman on 

pared to think of them as indivisible, correlative, supplementary 
of each other in one and the same Personality, so that there is 
no aspect of goodness which God is not ; and that the more, be- 
cause the notion of a perfection embraces all possible excellences, 
both moral and intellectual, is especially congenial to the mind, 
and there are in fact intellectual attributes, as well as moral, 
included in the child's image of God, as above represented. 

Such is the apprehension which even a child may have of his 
Sovereign, Lawgiver, and Judge ; which is possible in the case 
of children, because, at least, some children possess it, whether 
others possess it or no ; and which, when it is found in children, 
is found to act promptly and keenly, by reason of the paucity of 
their ideas. It is an image of the good God, good in Himself, 
good relatively to the child, with whatever incompleteness ; an 
image before it has been reflected on, and before it is recognized 
by him as a notion. Though he cannot explain or define the 
word " God," when told to use it, his acts show that to him it is 
far more than a word. He listens, indeed, with wonder and in- 
terest to fables or tales ; he has a dim, shadowy sense of what he 
hears about persons and matters of this world ; but he has that 
within him which actually vibrates, responds, and gives a deep 
meaning to the lessons of his first teachers about the will and 
the providence of God. 

So far, with some differences which are perhaps but dif- 
ferences of nomenclature, we have gone heartily along with 
Father Newman. His book is a counterpart to Butler's 
" Analogy," and as the first part of the " Analogy " has 
been in these bad times a supj^ort to many of us, when the 
formulas of the established creeds have crumbled away, so 
we give cordial welcome to this addition to our stock of re- 
ligious philosophy, which addresses itself to the intellect of 
the nineteenth century as Butler addressed that of its pre- 
decessor. But just as with Butler, when we pass from his 
treatment of the facts of nature to the defense of the dog- 
matic system of Christianity, we exchange the philosopher 
for the special pleader, so Father Newman at the same 
transition point equally ceases to convince. Assumption 
takes the place of reasoning. Facts are no longer looked 



" The Grammar of Assent.^' 99 

in the face, and objections are either ignored altogether or 
are caricatured in order to be answered. Hitherto he has 
been pleading the cause of religion as it has existed in all 
ages and under countless varieties of form. We are now led 
across the morasses of technical theology. We spring from 
tuft to tuft and hummock to hummock. The ground shakes 
about us, and we are allowed no breathing time to pause, 
lest it give way under our feet altogether. The promised 
land lies before us, the land of absolute repose in the decis- 
ions of the Infallible Church. Once there we may rest for- 
ever ; and we are swung along towards it, guided, if we 
may use the word for an absolute surrender of reason, by 
the obscure emotions and half realized perceptions of what 
is called the imaginative intellect. We leave behind us as 
misleading the apparatus of faculties which conduct us suc- 
cessfully through ordinary life. We are told to believe, 
and accept it on Father Newman's authority, that we are 
not after all chasing a will-o'-the-wisp, and that the other 
side to which he points the way is really solid ground, and 
not a mere fog-bank. 

There are two roads on which it is possible to travel, 
after starting from conscience and the acknowledgment of 
a God to whom we owe obedience. There is the theologi- 
cal road, and there is the road of experience and fact. To 
those who choose the second of these courses conscience is 
the sanction of right action ; while experience and observa- 
tion show us in what right action consists. The moral laws 
are inherent in nature like the laws of the material universe, 
and our business is to discover what they are. If we obey 
them, it is well with us ; if we disobey them we fail, and 
ruin ourselves internally in our characters, and sooner or 
later in our external fortunes. These laws are not arbitra- 
rily imposed from without, but are interfused in the consti- 
tution of things. Conscience insists that they must be 
obeyed, for they form the condition on which society holds 
together, and in obedience to them lies the essence of all 
genuine religion. 



100 Father Newman on 

From this j^oiiit of view the religious history of mankind 
is the history of the efforts which men have made to dis- 
cover the moral law, and enforce it so far as it is known. 
If we are asked why the moral laws, being of so much con- 
sequence to the well-being of mankind, were not made 
clear from the beginning, we can but answer that we do 
not know. The fact has been that they have been left to 
human energy to discover, like the law of gravitation ; our 
knowledge of them has been progressive, like our knowl- 
edge in every other department of nature ; and religious 
theories exhibit the same early imperfections, and the same 
gradual advance as astronomy or medicine. 

A second jDhenomenon is no less apparent on the most 
cursory as well as the most careful study of religious 
history. To obey the moral law has been always difficult ; 
to practice j)articular rites, or to profess particular opinions, 
is comparatively easy. Religions, therefore, as their initial 
fervor dies away, have uniformly shown a tendency to 
stiffen into ceremonial or superstitious observances, or else 
into theological theories. Duty has been made to consist 
in the compliance with particular creeds, or in practices of 
outward devotion ; and a compromise has been thus ar- 
rived at, by which men have been enabled to believe them- 
selves religious, without parting from their private self- 
indulgence. Religion has had two parts : the inward moral 
and spiritual, the outward ritualistic, or speculative ; and 
the division between them, and the history of their effects 
upon mankind, when one or the other has preponderated, is 
the most signal testimony to their real character, and to 
the relations in which they stand to each other and to the 
world. Where the moral element has been foremost, 
where men have been chiefly bent upon contending with 
practical evil, and making so much as they can understand 
of the law of God the rule of their dealings among them- 
selves, there the religion has spread over the earth like 
water for the purifying the nations. Where the supers ti- 



" The G-rammar of Assent,'^ 101 

tious or theological element has been in the ascendant, 
where charity has been second to orthodoxy, and religion 
has been an affair of temples and sacrifices and devotional 
refinements, there as uniformly it has lost its beneficent 
powers, it has fraternized with the blackest and darkest of 
human passions, and has carried with it as its shadow, 
division and hatred and cruelty. The power in the uni- 
verse, whatever it be, which envies human happiness, has 
laid hold of conscience and distracted it from its proi3er 
function. Instead of looking any more for our duties to 
our neighbors, we go astray, and quarrel with each other 
over imaginary speculative theories. We wonder at the 
failure of Christianity, at the small progress which it has 
made in comparison with the brilliancy of its rise : but if 
men had shown as much fanaticism in carrying into prac- 
tice the Sermon on the Mount as in disputing the least of 
the thousand dogmatic definitions which have superseded 
the Gospel, we should not be now lamenting with Father 
Newman that " God's control over the world is so indirect, 
and His action so obscure." 

The theological tendency, nevertheless, remains, in pos- 
session ; opinions are still looked upon as the test whether 
we are on the right road or the wrong : and it is in this 
direction and not the other that Father Newman would 
have us travel if our condition is to be mended. 

Devotion must have its objects, he tells us ; and they 
must be set before the mind as propositions, with which the 
intellect must be fed till it is saturated ; the intellect in re- 
turn will then guarantee that they are true by the tenacity 
with which it holds these propositions. 

He gives an instance of what he means in the use which 
he prescribes for the book of Psalms. " The exercise of 
the affections strengthens our api^rehension of the object 
of them," he says, " and it is impossible to exaggerate the 
influence exerted on the religious imagination, by a book 
of devotions so sublime, so penetrating, so full of deep in- 



102 Fatlier Neivman on 

struction as tlie Psalter." We are to take the Psalter, 
however, as a whole ; we may not inquire what part of it is 
authentic, or whether David, whose acts were of so mixed a 
character, was always divinely guided in his words. If we 
take the forty-second Psalm, we must take the hundred- 
and-ninth ; and those who accept the hundred-and-ninth as 
the word of God, are already far on their way towards auto- 
da-fes and massacres of St. Bartholomew. 

When the mind is thus devotionally pervaded, the Cath- 
olic theology will be developed by the theological intellect 
as naturally as geometrical theorems from the elementary 
axioms and propositions. The difficulty is with the prep- 
aration of the soil ; and if we find Father Newman un- 
persuasive, the fault may be simply in ourselves. Persua- 
siveness implies agreement in first principles between the 
teacher and the taught. It is possible that we may be 
color blind, or be without ear to follow the harmony of the 
theological variations. The Catholic doctrines may carry 
conviction only to the elect. Those who are chosen to 
inherit the blessing, may alone have grace to apprehend its 
conditions. If it be so, we are beyond hel^ ; but we claim 
for the present to belong to those who believe in God and 
in the moral laws, and to those, therefore, to whom Father 
Newman says that his book is addressed. In this character 
we have a right to speak, and when he fails to convince us, 
to give reasons for withholding our assent. 

Having chosen his course he commences characteristically 
with an exulting eulogy on the Athanasian Creed. No 
one, he seems to admit, can understand what the creed 
means. " The pure indivisible light," he says, " is seen 
only by the blessed inhabitants of heaven." The rays 
come to us on earth, " broken into their constituent colors ; " 
and when we attempt to combine them " we produce only a 
dirty white." Each ray, nevertheless, comes direct to us 
from above. It can be separately admired and adored for 
its particular beauty; and, when intelligence fails, faith 



" The Grammar of Assent,'' 103 

steps in. So with the million developments of theological _? 
subtlety. Simple-minded people cannot enter into these ^ 
refinements ; the terminology itself is unintelligible without 
a special and scientific education. But simple-minded men 
are not required to understand them. Their duty is merely 
to feel certain that every proposition laid down by the 
Church is true, and they are able to do it in virtue of a 
comprehensive acceptance of the authority of the Church 
itself. The Church says so and so, and therefore it is in- 
disputably certain that the truth is so and so. 

The difficulty is removed by the dogma of the Church's infal- 
libility, and of the consequent duty of " implicit faith " in her 
word. The " One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church " is an 
article of the creed, and an article which, inclusive of her infal- 
libility, all men, high and low, can easily master and accept with 
a real and operative assent. It stands in the place of all abstruse 
propositions in a Catholic's mind, for to believe in her word is 
virtually to believe in' them all. Even what he cannot under- 
stand, at least he can believe to be true ; and he believes it to 
be true because he believes in the Church. 

The next question of course is, how we can be certain 
that the Church is infallible; and to understand this we ' 
are carried back once more into the metaphysics of convic- 
tion. For the infallibility of the Church, or any truth, to 
produce an animating effect upon us, we must assent to it 
uaconditionally ; and Father Newman has first to prove in 
general, as against Locke and the inductive philosophy, that 
a state of undoubting assurance on the abstruse subjects is 
itself legitimate. 

" Assent," he says, is a distinct act of the mind which de- 
clares that it is made up. " It resembles the striking of 
a clock." ... It is an intimation that argument is over, 
the conclusion accepted, and the possibility of error no 
longer entertained. Numberless propositions are, in fact, 
held in this way in ordinary life. Each of us, for instance, 
holds with undoubting certainty, the proposition that " T 



104 Father Newwan on 

shall die/' or again, that " England is an island." " The 
fact of our death is in the future, and therefore in its nature 
contingent. We may have never ourselves personally sailed 
round England. Yet, in neither case, have we any doubt, 
or can a person of ordinary intelligence admit that there is 
room for doubt." 

The appeal to ordinary intelligence corresponds to the 
appeal at a later stage of the argument to the religious in- 
stincts of barbarous nations. Ordinary intelligence jumps 
hastily to conclusions. It is as often wrong as right, and 
the strength with which it holds a particular opinion may 
only be an index of want of thought. The proposition that 
" I shall die " seems at the first blush as indisputable as 
that the whole is greater than its part. But those who ac- 
cept the infallibility of St. Paul believe that, at the last 
trumpet, those that are alive will be caught up into the air 
without dying at all. The last day, they are warned, will 
come like a thief in the night, and they are charged to be 
on the watch for it. The thought, therefore, that it may 
come in their time will present itself not as a probability, 
but certainly as something not utterly impossible. Ordi- 
nary intelligence again is similarly absolutely certain that 
England is an island. The man of science is certain of it 
too, but in the sense of the word which Father Newman 
quarrels with. Sudden geographical changes are extremely 
rare; but the time has been when England was not an 
island, and the time may come when it will be re-attached 
to the continent. The Channel is shallow, not much deeper 
anywhere than the towers of Westminster Abbey. Exten- 
sive tracts of the globe have been rapidly dejDressed and 
rapidly raised again. It is therefore possible, though very 
unlikely, that there may be, at some point or other in the 
Channel, at any moment, a sudden upheaval. 

" Certainty," Father Newman insists, is the same in 
kind wherever and by whomsoever it is exj^erienced. The 
gravely and cautiously formed conclusion of the scientific 



" The G-rammar of Assent ^ 105 

investigator, and the determination of the school -gii I that 
the weather is going to be fine, do not differ from each 
other so far as they are acts of the mind. And the school- 
girl has pro tanto an evidence in her conviction that the 
fact will be as she believes. Nay, rather the laborious in- 
ference hesitatingly held after patient and skeptical exami- 
nation, Father Newman considers inferior in character, and 
likely to be less productive of fruit than assent more impul- 
sively yielded. 

In such instances of certitude, the previous labor of coming to 
a conclusion, and that repose of mind which I have above de- 
scribed as attendant on an assent to its truth, often counteracts 
whatever of lively sensation the fact thus concluded is in itself 
adapted to excite ; so that what is gained in depth and exactness 
of belief is lost as regards freshness and vigor. Hence it is that 
literary or scientific men, who may have investigated some diffi- 
cult point of history, philosophy, or physics, and have come to 
their own settled conclusion about it, having had a perfect right 
to form one, are far more disposed to be silent as to their convic- 
tions, and to let others alone, than partisans on either side of the 
question, Avho take it up with less thought and seriousness. And 
so again, in the religious world, no one seems to look for any 
great devotion or fervor in controversialists, writers on Christian 
Evidences, theologians, and the like, it being taken for granted, 
rightly or wrongly, that such men are too intellectual to be spir- 
itual, and are more occupied with the truth of doctrine than with 
its reality. If, on the other hand, we would see what the force 
of simple assent can be, viewed apart from its reflex confirmation, 
we have but to look at the generous and uncalculating energy of 
faith as exemplified in the primitive Martyrs, in the youths who 
defied the pagan tyrant, or the maidens who were silent under his 
tortures. It is assent, pure and simple, which is the motive 
cause of great achievements ; it is confidence, growing out of in- 
stincts rather than arguments, stayed upon a vivid apprehension, 
and animated by a transcendent logic^ more concentrated in will 
and in deed for the very reason that it has not been subjected to 
any intellectual development. 

Nothing can be more true than this, as applied to moral 



106 Father Newman on 

obligation; nothing more illusory if extended to doctrine 
or external fact. I may think myself right, but there is 
still a bridge to be crossed between my thought and the 
reality. My own experience assures me too painfully of 
my fallibility. I have experienced equally the fallibility of 
others. No one can seriously maintain that a consciousness 
of certitude is an evidence of facts on which I can rely. 
Yet Father Newman clings to the belief that in some sense 
or other it is a legitimate proof to any man of the truth of 
any opinion which he peremjitorily holds. " It is character- 
istic of certitude," he says, " that its object is a truth, a 
truth as such, a proposition as true. There are right and 
wrong convictions ; and certitude is a right conviction ; if it 
is not right with a consciousness of being right, it is not cer- 
titude. Now, truth cannot change : what is once truth is 
always truth ; and the human mind is made for truth, and so 
rests in truth, as it cannot rest in falsehood. When then it 
once becomes possessed of a truth, what is to dispossess it ? " 

It is open to Father Newman to distinguish, if he pleases, 
between certitude and conviction. He may say that we 
may be convinced of what is false, but only certain of what 
is true. But this is nothing to the purpose, so long as we 
have no criterion to distinguish one from the other as an 
internal impression. Father Newman is certain that the 
Pope is Vicar of Christ. Luther was no less certain that 
the Pope was Antichrist. Father Newman believes that 
the substance of bread is taken away in the act of consecra- 
tion. The Protestant martyrs died rather than admit that 
bread could cease to be bread when a priest mumbled a 
charm over it. Who or what is to decide between these 
several acts of consciousness, which was certitude and which 
conviction ? 

The Church evidently is the true Deus ex machinn. 
The Church, in virtue of its infallibility, will resolve this 
and all other difficulties ; and the infallibility, it seems, is 
somehow or other its own witness, and proves itself as Spi- 



" The Crrammar of Assent.'" 107 

noza demonstrated the existence of God. " I form a con- 
ception," Sjjinoza says, " of an absolutely perfect being. 
But existence is a mode of perfection ; a non-existent being 
is an imperfect being ; and therefore God's existence is 
involved in the Idea of Him." Father Newman similarly 
appears to say that the mind is made for truth, and de- 
mands it as a natural right. Of the elementary truth that 
the Church is infallible it can be as sure as that Victoria is 
Queen of England ; and this once established it has all that 
it requires. It is true that we have made mistakes; but 
usum non tollit ahusus. That we have been often wrong 
does not imply that we may not be right at last. Our fac- 
culties have a correspondence with truth. They were 
given to us to lead us into truth, and though they fail many 
times they may bring us right at last. Once established in 
certitude we have nothing more to fear, and may defy argu- 
ment thenceforth. Our past mistakes may after all have 
been only apparent. We have called ourselves certain, 
when we had only a strong presumption, an opiniort, or an 
intellectual inference. Or again, we may ftincy that we 
have changed our minds when in fact we have not changed 
our convictions but only developed them ; as a Theist re- 
mains a Theist though he add to his Theism a faith in reve- 
lation ; and a Protestant continues to hold the Athanasian 
Creed though he pass into a Catholic. St. Paul is admitted 
to be a difficulty ; St. Paul indisputably did once hold that 
Christianity was an illusion ; but St. Paul is got ri^ of by 
being made an exceptional person. " His conversion, as 
alsD his after life, was miraculous." 

Any way, when once possessed of certitude, we cannot 
lose it. No evidence, however clear, can shake us thence- 
forward. " Certitude ought to stand all trials or it is not 
certitude." Its very office is to cherish and maintain its 
object, and its very lot and duty is to sustain such shocks 
in maintenance of it without being damaged by them. 
Father Newman takes an example, and it is an e:?:tremely 
significant one. 



108 Father Newman on 

Lit us suppose we are told on an unimpeachable airtliority, 
tliat a man whom we saw die is now alive again and at liis work, 
as it was his wont to be ; let us suppose we actually see him and 
converse with him ; what will become of our certitude of his 
death ? I do not think we should give it up ; how could we, 
when we actually saw him die ? At first, indeed, we should be 
thrown into an astonishment and confusion so great, that the 
world would seem to reel round us, and we should be ready to 
give up the use of our senses and of our memory, of our reflec- 
tive powers, and of our reason, and even to deny our power of 
thinking, and our existence itself. Such confidence have we in 
the doctrine that when life goes it never returns. Nor would 
our bewilderment be less, when the first blow was over ; but our 
reason would rally, and Avith our reason our certitude would come 
back to us. Whatever came of it, we should never cease to 
know and to confess to ourselves both of the contrary facts, that 
we saw him die, and that after dying we saw him alive again. 
The overpowering strangeness of our experience would have no- 
power to shake our certitude in the facts which created it. 

No better illustration could have been given of the 
difference between what is called in commendation " a 
believing mind," and a mind trained to careful and precise 
observation. In such a case as Father Newman supposes, 
a jury of modern physicians would indisputably conclude 
that life had never been really extinct, that the symp- 
toms had been mistaken, and the phenomena of catalepsy 
had been confounded with the phenomena of death. If 
catalei:)sy was impossible, if the man had appeared, for 
instance, to lose his head on the scaffold, they would 
assume that there had been a substitution of persons, or 
that the observers had been taken in by some skillful optical 
trick. Father Newman may, perhaps, go further and 
suppose that they had themselves seen the man tied to a 
gun and blown to pieces beyond possibility of deception. 
But a man of science would reply that such a case could 
not occur. That men once dead do not return to life again 
has been revealed by an experience too uniform to allow 
its opposite to be entertained even as a hypothesis. 



" The Grrammar of Assent'"' 109 

Catholic certitude involving the acceptance of miracles, 
the development of the subject brings up naturally the 
famous argument of Hume. Father Newman is more 
candid in his statement of it than Butler. Butler, perhaps, 
had not read Hume's Essay, or he could hardly have evaded 
so completely the point of the objection. Men suppose, 
Butler says, that there is an antecedent presumption 
against miracles ; and he answers that there is a strong 
presumption against half the facts of ordinary experience. 
There are fifty ways which I may go after I leave my 
door. The odds are forty-nine to one against my taking 
any particular way that can be mentioned, yet when a 
person says that he saw me go that way and not another, 
his evidence is accepted without difficulty, and the fact is 
taken to be proved. But this is entirely to leave out of 
sight the difference between occurrences which are contrary 
to experience, and therefore improbable in themselves, and 
occurrences which have no inherent unlikelihood about 
them. That a notorious liar should have perjured himself 
in a court of justice would excite no surprise in itself, and 
would be believed on moderate evidence. That a notori- 
ously noble and upright man should have consciously done 
a base action for a selfish object would be so incredible to 
us, that scarcely any accumulation of proof would persuade 
us that it was true. 

Dr. Newman states the argument more justly, though we 
cannot think he succeeds in meeting it. 

" It is argued by Hume," he says, " against the actual 
occurrence of the Jewish and Christian miracles, that, 
whereas ' it is experience only which gives authority to 
human testimony, and it is the same experience which 
assures us of the laws of nature,' therefore, ' when these 
two kinds of exj^erience are contrary ' to each other, ' we 
are bound to subtract the one from the other ; ' and, in 
consequence, since we have no experience of a violation 
of natural laws, and much experience of the violation of 



110 Father Newman on 

triitli, 'wo may ostablisli it as a maxim, tliat no Imman 
Icsliinony can have sncli force as to prove a miracle, and 
m;ik(^ it ajnst foundation for ;iny system of religion.'" 

This is Hume's real argument accurately though briefly 
stated. How does Dr. Newman answer it? 

" I will a,c('('i)t the genei'al ])ro[)osition," he says, " but I 
resist its api)ru'ati()n. Doubtless, it is abstractedly more 
likc^ly (hat nuMi should lie than that the order of nature 
should be in (ringed ; but what is abstract reasoning to a 
(|uestion of concrete fact? To arrive at the fact of any 
matter, we must eschew generalities, and take things as 
tlu^y stand, with all their circumstances. . . . The ({uestion 
is not about miracles in general, or men in general, but 
deliniti^ly, whether these particular miracles, ascribed to 
the ])articular Peter, James, and John, are more lik(dy to 
liMve been than not." 

" INfore likely to have been than not " is a widely different 
Ihing from absolute certainty, and verges on the balancing 
of pi-obability whi(;h elsewhere is so severely dist^laimed. 
l^ut after a man has acce|)ted the general proposition, how 
ill rcMson can he ask what it has to do with concrete fact? 
! \s\\\\i elsc^ should it have to do with? It is not an axiom 
ol' purc^ mathematics or a formula made up of synd)ols. 
It ])i-olesses to be and it is a generalization from concrete 
('xju'rience. It calls itself rightly or wrongly an expression 
of a, universal truth, and being such, nuist therefore govern 
(^V(My ])ai'ticular instance which can be brought under it. 
Had Hume said simply that miracles were improbable, 
and that more evidence was required to establish them 
than to establish ordinary facts, the answer would have 
been to the purpose; but the gist of Hume's argument is 
that no evidence whatever can prove a miracle, and to 
accept tlu^ })remise and to refuse its application on the 
plea that it is an abstract proposition, is to fly in the face 
of logic and connnon sense. Catholics, in fact, do not and 
cannot feel the im})robability of niiracles. An invisible 



" The Gra7nmar of Assent.'' Ill 

but definite miracle is worked whenever a mass is said. 
In Catliolic countries miracles, real or imaginary, are 
things of daily occurrence. Under "particular circum- 
stances " they are more likely to occur than not, and 
therefore any, even tlie slightest and most indirect testi- 
mony is sufficient to make credible any given instance of 
miracle. 

Prejudices, prepossessions, " trifles light as air," irregular 
emotions, implicit reasons, " such as we feel, but which for 
some cause or other, because they are too subtle or too cir- 
cuitous, we cannot put into words so as to satisfy logic," 
these, and such as these, in matters of religion, arc genuine 
evidences to which, we are told, a reasonable man is ex- 
pected to ■ defer. Having once passed the line where evi- 
dence can be produced and tested, we are at the mercy of 
imagination, and the reader who has thus committed him- 
self can now be led forward blindfold through the analytical 
labyrinth. The intellectual ftxculties, " looking before and 
after," are touched as it were by a torpedo. Our criteria 
of truth leave us. One thing seems as reasonable as 
another. We strike our flag and surrender. We " con- 
sent," as Father Newman advises us, " to take things as 
they are and resign ourselves to what we find, instead of 
devising, which cannot be, some sufficient science of reason- 
ing which may compel certitude in concrete conclusions ; 
to confess that there is no ultimate test of truth besides the 
testimony borne to the truth by the mind itself; and that 
this phenomenon, perplexing as we may find it, is a normal 
and inevitable characteristic of the mental constitution of a 
being like man on a stage such as the world." 

In this condition we are invited to recognize the claims 
of the Catholic Church upon us. " The Catholic religion," 
we are told, " is reached by inquirers from all points of the 
compass, as if it mattered not where a man began so that 
he had an eye and heart for the truth." Before " the 
miserable deeds of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries" 



112 Father Newman on 

" the visible Church was the light of the world, conspicuous 
as the sun in the heavens. The creed was written on her 
forehead," in accordance with the text, " Who is she that 
looks forth at the dawn, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, 
terrible as an army set in array ? " " Clouds have now 
come over the sky, but what the Church has lost in her 
appeal to the imagination she has gained in philosophical 
cogency by the evidence of her persistent vitality. She is 
as vigorous in her age as in her youth, and has upon her 
prima facie signs of divinity." 

Whether the Church has really gained in philosophical 
coo-ency by the Reformation and its consequences is a 
matter on which Father Newman has a right to his opin- 
ion ; but others have also a right to theirs, which will 
probably be different. To ourselves it appears that what 
vitality she possesses is proportioned to the degree in 
which she has adopted the principles of her enemies ; that 
so far as she retains her own she becomes every hour more 
powerless to act upon them. If it be vitality to have lost 
her hold on nine tenths of the educated laymen in her own 
communion ; if it be vitality to have compelled every 
Catholic Government to take from her the last fibre of 
secular and civil authority, to deprive her even of her con- 
trol over education, and relegate her to the domain of mere 
opinion ; if it be a sign of vigor that her once world-wide 
temporal authority is now limited to a single state, and 
supported there by the bayonets of a stranger,^ then indeed 
the evidence of her divinity may be said to have gained 
strength. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the 
Church destroyed by sword and fire many hundi'eds of 
thousands of men and women in the effort to recover her 
dominion. She still professes intolerance, and Father 
Newman himself claims it as her right. Let her lay her 
hand upon one single heretic and dispose of him, as she 
used to do, at the stake ; let but one man, now on the occa- 

1 Written in the spring of 1870. 



" The Grammar of Assent. '' 113 

sion of this brilliant Council, be publicly burnt in Rome for 
want of orthodoxy, and who does not know that the whole 
ecclesiastical fabric would be torn to pieces by the indigna- 
tion of mankind? 

Yet to Father Newman the position of the Church is so 
splendid, she is so visibly the representative of the majesty 
of God, that she challenges comparison with every other 
religious institution, and has a claim in the fact of her ex- 
istence to universal submission. 

He now passes on to show in detail how the Church in 
her teaching and character corresponds with the demands 
of our nature. Returning to natural religion, but hence- 
forward in another relation to it, he appeals to the primi- 
tive traditions of our race, and to the present beliefs and 
practices of savage nations for the elementary and instinc- 
tive principles of devotion. 

The condition of the savage, from the point of view of 
history, is simple and intelligible. Ignorant of the nature 
of the forces which surround him, ignorant that the move- 
ments of the stars, the revolution of the seasons, the phe- 
nomena of growth and decay, and sickness and health, are 
the result of agencies constant in their operation and dis- 
coverable by observation, he attributes them to the capri- 
cious will of beings like himself, and differing from him 
only in power. He makes God or gods after his own im- 
age, and knowing that he himself is alternately generous 
and benevolent, and vindictive and passionate, treats his 
divinities as he is himself treated by his own slaves, regards 
them with a combination of love and terror, and prays to 
them, flatters them, and sacrifices to them, to win their 
favor to himself, and bribe them to look kindly on liis en- 
terprises. Ill fortune affecting him more keenly than pros- 
perity, he attributes to them uniformly a disposition of envy, 
if not of malignity. He concludes that they bear a grudge 
against human happiness, and must be propitiated if their 
jealousy is to be appeased. He passes over without atteu- 



1^, 



114 Father Neivman on 

tion the ordinary occurrences of life. He dwells on the 
exceptions. He shudders at the eclipse, the thunder-storm, 
or the epidemic. He is excited by coincidents and acci- 
dents. He looks for God, not in nature, but in what seem 
to him to be interferences with nature, and according as 
they affect his own fortunes, he believes that supernatural 
beings are watching over him for good or for evil. 

Tendencies which result manifestly from ignorance of 
natural causes, and yield everywhere before attention to 
facts, are to Father Newman the first trustworthy exhi1)i- 
tion of the spiritual instincts of mankind. The religion of 
cultivation, the clearer insight which has been obtained by 
science into the system vmder which the world is really 
governed, he sets aside as unworthy of consideration — as 
beside the question — as a mode of thought developed by 
intellect alone to the exclusion of conscience. He despises 
modern ideas on these and kindred matters so entirely that 
he cannot treat them with the fairness which his argument 
demands ; for he challenges comparison for the Catholic 
Church with every rival belief, and he will not allow it to 
be compared with the creed which now divides the educated 
world with her. The savage is his spiritual ancestor, from 
whom he glories in being the visible descendant. He 
might as well say that the science of astronomy ought not 
to be gathered from actual observation of the movements 
of the heavenly bodies, but should be developed rather from 
the primitive ideas of the early races, which saw in the stars 
and constellations of stars the monuments of the loves of 
the gods or the trophies of their wars. 

He dwells with especial satisfaction on the cruel element 
of most heathen creeds, particularly on the propitiatory 
sacrifices. He insists on the vindictive character of Divine 
punishment — vindictive as distinct from corrective — and 
in his passion for retribution forgets or obliterates justice. 
That an offense be followed by retaliation is the first 
necessity to him. That the criminal himself should be the 



\^. 



" TJie Grmnmar of Assent.'^ 115 

person to suffer is only the second. Civilized nations en- 
deavor imperfectly" to limit the consequences of bad actions 
to the j)erpetrators themselves. We consider governments 
to be good or bad as men receive under them the just re- 
ward of their conduct. Father Newman's sense of equity | 
is satisfied with vicarious penalties ; and as he prefers the 
fetish of the savage to the philosophy of the man of science, 
we presume that he would consider the criminal system of 
China nearer than that of Europe to the general order of 
Providence. In China, when a murder has been com- 
mitted, the law demands life for life ; but Chinese justice 
is satisfied with the punishment of somebody, and the 
criminal is permitted to find a substitute. Father Newman 
says : " Since all human suffering is in its last resolution 
the punishment of sin, and punishment implies a rule and a 
rule of justice, he who undergoes the jDunishment of another 
in his stead may be said in a certain sense to satisfy the 
claims of justice towards that other in his own person." 
We should rather say that when the innocent suffers for the 
guilty, a second wrong has been added to the first : and (^ 
although, in the imperfection of human things, justice often 
misses its mark, and in the confusion and whirl of life the 
penalties of evil deeds are distributed unequally and un- 
fairly, the function of human society is to redress these 
inequalities rather than acquiesce in thein and sanction 
them ; and a government stands high or low in its claim to 
honor and respect, according as it adjusts jmnishments to 
the shoulders on which they legitimately ought to fall. 

Modern ideas on these and similar subjects are here char- 
acterized, however, as " simply fiilse," " inasmuch as they 
contradict the primary teaching of nature in the human race, 
wherever a religion is found and its workinsfs can be ascer- 
tained." Father Newman's views are, in one respect, con- 
sistent. He admits that these religions, to which he pays so 
much honor, " in the corrupt state in which they appear in 
history, are little better than schools of imposture, crueltv, 



116 Father Newman 



on 



and impurity," and inasmuch as lie considers that " God is 
sanctity, truth, and love, and the three offenses against his 
majesty are impurity, unveracity, and cruelty," the acknowl- 
edgment seriously impairs their value as authorities. The 
Church, however, it must be confessed, has in this respect 
made good its kindred with them. The monasteries in the 
sixteenth century were found to be nests of unnatural crime. 
The claims of the Holy See were built on forged decretals, 
the Bible was supplanted by legends of saints, and the 
bloody customs of Dahomey are less atrocious than the Paris 
frenzy on the day of St. Bartholomew, for which Gregory 
XIII. ordered a Te Deum. 

If the corrupt early religions are notwithstanding more 
trustworthy than philosophy, it is but reasonable to main- 
tain that the Church may have committed the same crimes, 
and retain in spite of them its divine claims to our admira- 
tion. 

The dominant Catholic Church (he continues) aimed at the 
benefit of all nations by the spiritual conquest of all ; ... . its 
successes have on the whole been of extreme benefit to the 
human race. It has imparted an intelligent notion about the 
Supreme God among millions who would have lived and died in 
irreligion. It has raised the tone of moraUty wherever it has 
come, has abolished great social anomalies and miseries, has 
raised the female sex to its proper dignity, has protected the 
poorer classes, has destroyed slavery, encouraged literature and 
philosophy, and had a principal part in that civilization of the 
human kind, which with some evils still has on the whole been 
productive of far greater good. 

This is hardy, to say the least of it. "When the Church 
was in the plenitude of its power, the notion taught by it of 
the Supreme God was that of a being who looked approv- 
ingly on an auto-da-fe, who could be bribed to remit the 
penalties of sin by masses purchased with money ; who, 
though all-wise and all-good, could be turned aside from 
his purpose by the entreaties or remonstrances of the saints. 
The same notion is still evidently held by Father Newman 



" The Grammar of Assent:' 117 

himself, who has submitted to a Church whose voice he re- 
gards as the voice of the Holy Spirit, yet whose impending 
decisions he ventures to deprecate and dread. He argues as 
if the Holy Spirit were about to dictate a decree the effects 
of which had been imperfectly considered. He tells us that 
he prays to Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Athanasius, 
Chrysostom, and Basil, to avert the great calamity ; and, as 
if the Supreme Power were indifferent or blind, believes, or 
affects to believe, " that their intercession would decide the 
matter." Of all theories ever proposed by man on the gov- 
ernment of the universe, this seems to us to be about the 
maddest.^ 

As for the other achievements which he claims for Ro- 
manism, history would say that the abolition of social anom- 
alies had commenced with the revolt of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, and had progressed side by side with the intellectual 
movement which he detests and despises. The Spaniards, 
the most Catholic of nations, were the most ruthless in their 
conquests, and have been the last to part with their slaves. 
Tlie extinction of serfdom in England was coincident with 
the Reformation. The tyranny of the French aristocracy 
survived unmolested while the Church was predominant, 
and fell with its fall. As to encouragement of literature, 
what one distinguished man of letters in the last three cen- 
turies has owed anything to the patronage of Rome ? 

Father Newman pays an unwilling compliment to the 
Reformation in claiming the effects of it for the body to 
which he belongs. An analogous deference to the modern 
spirit appears still more singularly in the following ingenious 
passage : — 

Eternity or endlessness is in itself only a negative idea, 
though punishment is positive. Its fearful force, as added to 
punishment, lies in what it is not. It means no change of state, 
no annihilation, no restoration, but it cannot become a quality of 

1 The allusion is to a letter of Father Newman's, published while the 
Council was sitting in Rome, and before it had decided the " Infallibility." 



118 Father Newman on 

punishment any more than a man's living seventy years is a 
quality^ of his mind, or enters into the idea of his virtues or tal- 
ents. If punishment be attended by continuity, or by sense of 
succession, this must be because it is endless and something more. 
Such inflictions are an addition to its endlessness, and do not 
necessarily belong to it because it is endless. As I have already 
said, the great mystery is not that evil has no end, but that it 
had a beginning. But I remit the whole subject to the Theolog- 
ical School. 

The time has been when the fathers of the Church con- 
) ceived that a principal source of the happiness of the blessed 
( would be the contemplation of the torments of the damned. 
We cannot jump off our shadows, and as little can we es- 
cape the influence of the society in which we live. Father 
Newman is as unable as the most tender-hearted liberal to 
contemplate without horror the never-ending conscious 
agony of a human soul. 

To draw these remarks to a conclusion. What has been 
said is from the nature of the case no more than a series of 
imperfectly connected criticisms. To do justice to a book so 
closely written and so delicately organized would require a 
volume as long as itself and a skill equal to its author's. 
We have been able only to indicate the line of its purpose, 
and to take objections to the successive positions which are 
assumed as the argument develops itself. 

The conclusion contains a beautiful sketch of the rise of 
Christianity, with an analysis of the causes assigned by Gib- 
bon in explanation of its spread, and an exhibition of their 
insufficiency. We are not concerned to defend Gibbon, 
whose reasoning on this subject has always appeared to us 
singularly unconvincing. Still less do we wish to question 
the nature of the power which enabled Christianity to dif- 
fuse itself ; though we may mean by Christianity something 
else than Father Newman means, and by the power which 
enabled it to grow, a spiritual influence working from 
mind to mind, rather than an external supernatural force. 
Father Newman identifies Christianity with the complex doc- 



" The Grammar of Assent.^' 110 

trinal system embodied in the formulas and represented in 
the constitution of the Catholic Church. We mean by it 
the code of moral duties which were taught by our Lord 
upon the Mount, and which, as the type of human perfec- 
tion, He illustrated in his own character. In so far as the 
Catholic Church has adhered to the original pattern, in so 
far as it has addressed itself to the moral sense, and has 
aimed rather at making men good than at furnishing their 
intellects with orthodox formulas, so far it has fulfilled its 
function of regenerating mankind. Under this aspect the 
spread of it ceases to be a mystery. The Roman world was 
sunk in lies, insincere idolatry, and the coarsest and most 
revolting profligacy. There is something in human nature, 
in all times and in all countries, which instinctively recoils 
against such things, something which says that lies are 
to be abhorred, and that purity is nobler than bestiality ; 
and when the bad side of things is at its worst the nobler 
sort of men refuse to put up with it longer. The Roman 
government offered to the devotion of the empire a Divus 
Nero or a Divus Domitianus. The image of a peasant of 
Palestine, a being of stainless integrity, appeared simultane- 
ously, pointing to a Father in heaven, and requiring men in 
his name to lead pure and self-sacrificing lives ; and if it be 
true that man is more than a beast, and that conscious and 
moral sense are a part of his natural constitution, we re- 
quire no miracles to explain why millions of men and 
women with such alternatives before them were found to 
choose the better part. 

Father Newman thinks it unexampled : if he will study 
the history of the Reformation he will find its exact counter- 
part among " the miserable deeds " of the sixteenth century. 

The great mass of Christians were to be found in those classes 
■which were of no account in the world, whether on the score of 
rank or of education. 

We all know this was the case with our Lord and his Apostles. 
It seems almost irreverent to speak of their temporal employ- 



120 Father Newman on 

ments, when we are so simply accustomed to consider them in 
their spiritual association ; but it is profitable to remind ourselves 
that our Lord Himself Avas a sort of smith, and made ploughs 
and cattle-yokes. Four apostles were fishermen, one a petty tax- 
collector, two husbandmen, one is said to have been a coachman, 
and another a market-gardener. When Peter and John were 
brought before the Council, they are spoken of as being, in a sec- 
ular point of view, " illiterate men, and of the lower sort," and 
thus they are spoken of in a later age by the fathers. 

I'hat their converts were of the same rank as themselves is re- 
ported, in their favor or to their discredit, by friends and ene- 
mies, for four centuries. " If a man be educated," says Celsus in 
mockery, " let him keep clear of us Christians ; we want no men 
of wisdom, no men of sense. We account all such as evil. No ; 
but if there be one who is inexperienced, or stupid, or untaught, 
or a fool, let him come with good heart." " They are weavers," 
he says elsewhere, " shoemakers, fullers, illiterate, clowns." 
" Fools, low-born fellows," says Trypho. " The greater part of 
you," says Caecilius, " are worn with want, cold, toil, and famine ; 
men collected from the lowest dregs of the people ; ignorant, 
credulous women ; " " unpolished, boors, illiterate, ignorant even 
of the sordid arts of life ; they do not understand even civil mat- 
ters, how can they understand divine ? " " They have left their 
tongs, mallets, and anvils, to preach about the things of heaven," 
says Libanius. "They deceive women, servants, and slaves," says 
Julian. The author of Philopatris speaks of them as " poor crea- 
tures, blocks, withered old fellows, men of downcast and pale vis- 
ages." As to their religion, it had the reputation popularly, 
according to various fathers, of being an anile superstition, the 
discovery of old women, a joke, a madness, an infatuation, an 
absm-dity, a fanaticism. 

For Celsus and Julian write the Jesuit Campion, and 
we have exactly the language which was applied to English 
Protestantism. Protestantism, like Christianity itself, be- 
gan from below. The Marian martyrs were nine tenths of 
them petty tradesmen and mechanics. The Christian broth- 
ers who first imported Tyndal's New Testament were weav- 
ers, carpenters, and cobblers ; and the Catholic missionaries 
who came over in Elizabeth's time to reconquer England, 



" The G-ramwar of Assent'' 121 

declared that their only opponents were to be found among 
the vilest of the people. 

The Catholic religion in the sixteenth century had be- 
come like the heathen religions in the first. It had forgot- 
ten moral duty in the development of its theologj-. The 
service of God had become a juggler's game ; the only visi- 
ble fruits of it were tyranny and simony and laciviousness : 
and the uncorrupted part of Europe rose in indignation and 
declared that they would remain in it no longer : that God 
was a Spirit, and those who worshipped Him should worship 
in spirit and in truth. The Church treated them as the 
Roman Emjjire had treated the Church in its infancy. 
They suffered martyrdom like the early Christians in de- 
fense of the same principles, and like them they conquered. 

If we are now perplexed and disheartened, if some of us 
are looking back into Egypt and others are staggering into 
Atheism, it is because Protestants themselves have struck 
in turn into the same miserable course. They too have 
mistaken theology for religion, and strangled themselves in 
dogmatic formulas. The Catholic turned religion into rit- 
ual, the Protestant has made it consist in holding particular 
opinions, and at once has become an idolater like the other. 
He has grown afraid of intelligence. He has shrunk from 
facts, and prefers a pious- belief to the recognition of obvious 
truths. He has lost his horror of falsehood, and with it 
the secret of his strength. But as Christianity was in the 
beginning, so Protestantism was when it rose in its first 
revolt. The resources of it were no greater, yet its story 
was the same. The parallel which Father Newman looks 
for in vain he will find there if he cares to seek for it, and 
it is fatal to his own theory. 



CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF 
PROTESTANTISM. 



In one of the western counties, the writer of this paper 
was recently present at an evening Evangelical prayer- 
meeting. The congregation were partly church-goers, 
partly dissenters of various denominations, united for the 
time by the still active revivalist excitement. Some were 
highly educated men and women : farmers, tradesmen, ser- 
vants, sailors, and fishermen made up the rest : all were 
representative specimens of Evangelical Christians, pas- 
sionate doctrinalists, convinced that they, and only they, 
possessed the " Open Sesame " of heaven, but doing credit 
to their faith by inoffensive, if not useful lives. One of 
them, who took a leading part in the proceedings, was a 
person of large fortune, who was devoting his money, time, 
and talents to what he called the truth. Another was well- 
known through two counties as a hard-headed, shrewd, 
effective man of business ; a stern, but on the whole, and as 
times went, beneficent despot over many thousands of un- 
manageable people. 

The services consisted of a series of addresses from 
different speakers, interchanged with extempore prayers, 
directed rather to the audience than to the Deity. At in- 
tervals, the congregation sung hymns, and sung them par- 
ticularly well. The teaching was of the ordinary kind, 
expressed only with more than usual distinctness. We 
were told that the business of each individual man and 
woman in the world was to save his or her soul ; that we 
were all sinners together — all equally guilty, hopeless, lost, 



Condition and Prospects of Protestantism. 123 

accursed children, unable to stir a finger or do a thing to 
help ourselves. Happily, we were not required to stir a 
finger; rather, we were forbidden to attempt it. An anti- 
dote had been provided for our sins, and a substitute for 
our obedience. Everything had been done for us. We 
had but to lay hold of the perfect righteousness which had 
been fulfilled in our behalf. We had but to put on the 
vesture provided for our wearing, and our safety was as- 
sured. The reproaches of conscience were silenced. We 
were perfectly happy in this world, and certain to , be 
blessed in the next. If, on the other hand, we neglected 
the offered grace ; if, through carelessness, or intellectual 
perverseness, or any other cause, we did not apprehend it 
in the j)roj)er manner ; if we tried to please God ourselves 
by " works of righteousness," the sacrifice would then cease 
to avail us. It mattered nothing whether, in the common 
acceptation of the word, we were good or bad ; we were 
lost all the same, condemned by perfect justice to everlast- 
ing torture. 

It is, of course, impossible for human creatures to act 
towards one another on these principles. The man of 
business on week-days deals with those whom he employs 
on week-day rules. He gives them work to do, and he 
expects them to do it. He knows the meaning of good 
desert as well as of iU desert. He promises and he threat- 
ens. He praises and he blames. He will not hear of 
vicarious labor. He rewards the honest and industrious. 
He punishes the lazy and the vicious. He finds society so 
constructed that it cannot exist unless men treat one an- 
other as responsible for their actions, and as able to do 
right as well as wrong. 

And, again, one remembered that the Christian's life 
on earth used to be represented as a warfare; that the 
soldier wdio went into battle considering only how he could 
save his own life, would do little credit to the cause he was 
fighting for ; and that there were other things besides and 



124 Condition and Prospects of Protestantism. 

before saving their souls which earnest men used to think 
about. 

The listeners, however, seemed delighted. They were 
hearing what they had come to hear — what they had heard 
a thousand times before, and would hear with equal ardor 
a thousand times again — the gospel in a nutshell ; the 
magic formulas which would cheat the devil of his due. 
However antinomian the theory might sound, it was not 
abused by anybody present for purposes of self-indulgence. 
While they said that it was impossible for men to lead 
good lives, they were, most of them, contradicting their 
words by their practice. While they professed to be think- 
ing only of their personal salvation, they were benevolent, 
generous, and self-forgetful. People may express them- 
selves in what formulas they please ; but if they sincerely 
believe in God, they try to act uprightly and justly ; and 
the language of theology, hovering, as it generally does, 
between extravagance and conventionality, must not be 
scanned too narrowly. 

There is, indeed, attaching to all propositions, one im- 
portant condition — that they are either true or false ; and 
it is noticeable that religious people reveal unconsciously, 
in their way of speaking, a misgiving that the ground is 
insecure under them. We do not mean, of course, that 
they knowingly maintain what they believe may possibly 
be a mistake ; but whatever persuasion they belong to, they 
do not talk about truth, but they talk about the truth ; the 
truth being the doctrine which, for various reasons, they 
each prefer. Truth exists independently of them. It is 
searched for by observation and reason. It is testCvi by 
evidence. There is a more and a less in the degree to 
which men are able to arrive at it. On the other hand, for 
the truth the believer has the testimony of his heart. It 
suits his spiritual instincts ; it answers his spiritual desires. 
There is no " perhaps " about it ; no balancing of argument. 
Catholics, Anglicans, Protestants, are each absolutely cer- 



Condition and Prospects of Protestantism. 125 

tain that tliey are right. God, it would seem, makes truth ; 
men make the truth ; which, more or less, approaches to 
the other, but is not identical w^ith it. If it were not so, 
these different bodies, instead of quarreling, would agree. 
The measure of approximation is the measure of the 
strength or usefulness of the different systems. Experience 
is the test. If in virtue of any creed men lead active, 
upright, self-denying lives, the creecT itself is tolerable ; 
and whatever its rivals may say about it, is not, and cannot 
be, utterly false. 

. It seems, however, as if the Evangelicals were painfully 
anxious to disclaim any such criterion. When the first 
address was over, the congregation sung the following 
singular hymn, one of a collection of which, it appeared 
from the title-page, that many hundred thousand copies 
were in circulation : — 

Nothing, either great or small, 

Nothing, sinners, no ; 
Jesus did it — did it all 

Long, long ago. 

It is finished, yes, indeed, 

Finished every jot; 
Sinners, this is all you need, 

Tell rae, Is it not? 

When He from his lofty throne 

Stooped to do and die, 
Everything was fully done, 

Hearken to his cry. 

"Weary, weary, burdened one, 

Wherefore toil you so? 
Cease your doing, all was done 
Long, long ago. 

Till to Jesus' work you cling 

By a simple faith. 
Doing is a deadly thing, 

Doing ends in death. 

— Cast your deadly doing down, 

Down at Jesus' feet, 
Stiind in Ilini, in Him alone, 
Gloriously complete. 



126 Condition and Prosjjects of Protestaydism, 

And this, we said to ourselves, is Protestantism. To do 
our duty has become a deadly thing. This is what, after 
three centuries, the creed of Knox and Luther, of Coligny 
and Gustavus Adolphus, has come to. The first Reformers 
were so anxious about what man did, that if they could 
they would have laid the world under a discipline as severe 
as that of the Roman Censors. Their modern representa- 
tives are wiser than their fixthers, and know better what 
their Maker requires of them. To the question, " What 
shall I do to inherit eternal life ? " the answer of old was 
not, " Do nothing," but " Keep the commandments." It 
was said by the Apostle from whose passionate metaphors 
Protestant theology is chiefly constructed, that " the Gen- 
tiles, who did by nature the tilings contained in the law," 
were on the road to the right place. But we have changed 
all that. We are left face to face with a creed which tells 
us that God has created us without the power to keep the 
commandments, — that He does not require us to keep 
them ; yet at the same time that we are infinitely guilty in 
his eyes for not keeping them, and that we justly deserve 
to be tortured forever and ever, — to suff'er, as we once 
heard an amiable, excellent clergyman express it, " to suffer 
the utmost pain which Omnipotence can inflict, and the 
creature can endure, without annihilation." 

The scene of the evening was too soothing at the time 
for unpleasant reflections on the paradoxes of theology. 
The earnest attention, the piety, the evident warmth of 
belief, the certainty that those who were so loudly de- 
nouncing the worth of human endeavor would carry away 
with them a more ardent desire to do the works of right- 
eousness, of which they were denying the necessity — these 
things suggested happier conclusions on the condition of 
humanity ; when the hearts of men are sound, the Power 
which made and guides us corrects the follies of our heads. 

Nevertheless, when we are considering the general in- 
fluence for good or evil of a system or systems, the intel- 



Condition and Prospects of Protestantism. 127 

lectual aspect of them cannot be disregarded. Religion 
is, or ought to be, the consecration of the whole man : of 
his heart, his conduct, his knowledge, and his mind ; of the 
highest faculties which have been given in trust to him, 
and the highest acquirements which he has obtained for 
himself. When the gospel was first made generally known 
through the Roman Empire, it attracted and absorbed the 
most gifted and thoughtful men then living. Pagan phi- 
losophy of the post-Christian era has left no names which 
will compete on its own ground with those of Origen, 
Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria. When the Re- 
formers broke the spell of superstition in the sixteenth 
century, their revolt was ascribed by the Catholics to the 
pride of human reason. Some enchantment must now 
have passed over Protestantism, or over the minds of those 
to whom it addresses itself, when science and cultivation 
are falling off from it as fast as Protestantism fell away 
from its rival. How has a creed which had once sounded 
the sj^iritual reveille like the blast of the archangel's trum- 
pet come now to proclaim in passionate childishness the 
" deadliness " of human duty ? 

The best that every man knows dies with him ; the part 
of him which he can leave behind in written words, conveys 
but half his meaning even to the generation which lies 
nearest to him, to the men whose minds are under the 
same influences with his own. Later ages, when they 
imagine that they are following the thoughts of their 
forefathers, are reading their own thoughts in expressions 
which serve to them but as a mirror. The pale shadow 
called Evangelical religion, clothes itself in the language of 
Luther and Calvin. Yet what Luther and Calvin meant 
is not what it means. The Protestantism of the sixteenth 
century commanded the allegiance of statesmen, soldiers, 
philosophers, and men of science. Wherever there was a 
man of powerful intelligence and noble heart, there was a 
champion of the Reformation ; and the result was a re- 



128 Condition and Prospects of Protestantism.. 

vival, not of internal emotion, but of moral austerity. Tlie 
passion of Evangelical teachers in every country where 
the Reformation made its way, was to establish, so far as 
the world would let them, the discipline of Geneva, to 
make men virtuous in spite of themselves, and to treat sins 
as crimes. The writings of Knox and Latimer are not 
more distinguished by the emphasis with which they thun- 
der against injustice and profligacy, than by their all but 
total silence on " schemes of salvation." The Protestant- 
ism of the nineteenth century has forsaken j3ractice for 
( opinion. It puts opinion first, and practice second ; and in 
^ doing so it has parted company with intellect and practical 
force. It has become the property of the hysterical tem- 
perament, which confounds extravagance with earnestness ; 
and even of those most under its influence, an ever-increas- 
ing number are passing back under the shadow of Cathol- 
icism, and are taking refuge in the worn-out idolatries 
from which their fathers set them free. What is the 
meaning of so singular a phenomenon ? Religion — Prot- 
estant as well as Catholic — is ceasing everywhere to 
control the public life of the State. Government in all 
countries is becoming sternly secular. The preambles of 
old acts of Parliament contained usually in formal words a 
reference to the will of the Almighty. Legislators looked 
for instruction not to political economy, but to their Bibles. 
" The \\\\\ of the Almighty " is now banished to the con- 
science or the closet. The statesman keeps rigidly to the 
i experienced fixcts of the world, and will have neither priest 
[ nor minister to interpret them for him. Political economy 
may contradict the Sermon on the Mount, but it is none 
the less the manual of our political leaders. 

Nor does thought fare better than practice. The phi- 

~ losopher takes refuge in a "perhaps," and will not be 

driven to say things are certain which wise men cannot 

agree about. The man of science is supreme in his own 

domain, and will not permit theologians to interfere with 



Condltio7i and Prospects of Protestantism. 129 

his conclusions. Society, in its actual life, has long been 
atheistic. The speculative creed begins to show a ten- 
dency to follow in the track of practice. The sovereign of 
modern literature — the greatest master of modern culture 
says distinctly : — 

Wer Wissenschaft und Kuust besitzt, 

Hat audi Religion ; 
Werjene Beiden nioht besitzt, 

Der habe Religion. 

On the whole public life of this age, on its politics, on its 
science, on its huge energetic warfare with, and conquest 
of, nature, might be written the inscription on the pedestal 
of the statue of Alexander : — 

Vf]v vtt' k/iov Ttdeiiat, Zsv- ai) 6' "Olvfinov eX£- 

That this singular estrangement should have taken place 
in France and Italy is no matter of surprise. The Catholic 
Church declared war with science when it denounced 
Galileo, and broke with temporal governments when it 
claimed a right to depose kings. It is chained to a system 
of doctrine which half Europe, three centuries ago, de- 
clared to be incredible, and which has received no further 
authentication since ; while the taint is on it of the enor- 
mous crimes which it committed or prompted to sustain its 
failing dominion — crimes which it will not condemn and 
dares not acknowledge. The progress which mankind have 
made throughout the world in the last ten generations 
has been acliieved in spite of a Church which could coexist 
with moral corruption, but shrunk from intellectual activity, 
which fought against reason with fire and sword, and still 
mumbles curses where unable longer to use force. 

But why should the same phenomenon be visible among 
Protestants ? Protestantism has no past to be ashamed of. 
The prosperity of so-called Protestant nations as contrasted 
with Catholic, is a favorite argument with Protestant con- 
troversialists. Protestantism was the creed of Burghley, of 
Cromwell, of Bacon, of Newton, of Berkeley. It shattered 



h 



130 Condition and Prospects of Protestantism. 

the Spanish Empire ; it fused the United Provinces into a 
republic, and created in its modern' aspect the nationality 
of Scotland. As a spiritual force there has been nothing 
equal to it since the growth of Christianity. Why has it, 
too, lost its power to charm? Why has the great river 
which bore upon its breast the destinies of nations sunk 
away into the sands of modern civilization ? 

The tendency of the changes in progress among us can 
be dimly seen, although the ultimate outcome of them is 
beyond the reach of prudent conjecture. The existing 
facts of the case become daily plainer. The positive creed 
y has lapsed from a rule of life into a debated opinion. It 
is no longer heard in our legislature. It is no longer re- 
spected in our philosophies. Its local spasmodic revivals 
resemble the convulsive movements of something which is 
in the agonies of death. Its threats and its promises, how- 
-, ever clamorously uttered from the pulpits, are endured with 
( weariness, or with the attention of resentful incredulity. 

Let us follow a little further the curious phrase to which 
we just now alluded. All religious bodies call their doc- 
trine the truth — as distinguished from true. It is particu- 
larly characteristic of the Evangelicals, who wish to be 
emphatic, and prefer the warmer expression. The more 
the words are studied, the more pregnant they appear. 
Truth is the same in all ages, in all languages, and to all 
races of men. The two sides of a triangle are greater than 
the third, in China as well as in England. The Professor 
of Astronomy at St. Petersburgh has no more doubt about 
the Newtonian theory than Le Yerrier or Mr. Adams. 
Hindoo surgeons accept and understand the circulation of 
the blood as easily as the students at St. Thomas's. Facts 
once established are facts for all time ; and human beings 
everywhere can be brought to recognize and admit them, 
where the evidence is properly before their eyes. There 
is no need of authority. There is no occasion to say " Be- 
lieve tliis, or you will be damned." Truth carries its own 



Condition and Prospects of Protestantism, 131 

witness with it, and an added denunciation would only sug- 
gest misgivings. 

The conditions under which the propositions of a creed 
have found acceptance are singularly different : one man 
sees the force of the evidence for them ; to another the evi- 
dence is no evidence at all. We are told that the heart 
must be in the right state, that there must be the gift of 
the Sjjirit, prevenient grace, election, conversion, assurance, 
and one knows not what. The phraseology points in itself 
to something individual, to special favor bestowed upon this 
or that particular soul. Yet the phenomena of the world 
and of history will not fit into any such formula. The doc- 
trines of the Reformation were not accepted by this person 
or rejected by that ; but as if by some latent magnetism, 
they selected throughout Europe the Teutonic races, leaving 
the Celtic and Latin races, after a brief struggle, to Cathol- 
icism, and scarcely touching the Sclavonic races at all. 
Enojland and Scotland became Protestant; but the arsju- 
ments which converted the Saxons failed to touch the Irish. 
When the war of freedom ended in the Low Countries, the 
seven Teutonic Provinces were independent and Calvin- 
istic, while Celtic Belgium remained to Rome and Spain. 
France, in which Celtic and Prankish elements were com- 
bined, was convulsed for half a century. The country could 
not be divided, and the majority carried the day. But it is 
said the part taken by the great families in the wars of the 
League was determined by their blood : the Colignys, the 
Turennes, the Montgomerys, the Rochefoucaulds, all the 
leading Huguenots, were of German descent. 

We are not to suppose that there was a second time a se- 
lection of a peculiar jDcople. No respectable divine has ever 
held that the Teutonic race, as a race, were favored with a 
special revelation. Nor has piety, or the peculiar grace of 
character which religion and only religion bestows, been 
peculiar to them or their creed, There are saints and sin- 
ners anion •! Latins as well as Teutons. There are saints 



132 Condition and Prospects of Protestantism. 

and sinners among Catholics as well as Protestants. Each 
only has followed a spiritual type of its own. Something 
else has been at work besides either divine grace or out- 
ward evidence of truth, something which, for want of a bet- 
ter word, we must call spiritual affinity. 

Nor is this all. Free thought was once offered to the 
world in the form of Protestantism, but it was offered once 
only. Those who refused it then never seem to have had 
a second opportunity ; and the subsequent rebellions of rea- 
son against authority have all taken the form of revolution. 
Protestantism has made no converts to speak of in Europe 
since the sixteenth century. It shot up in two generations 
to its full stature, and became an established creed with de- 
fined boundaries ; and the many millions who in Catholic 
countries proclaim their indifference to their religion, either 
by neglect or contempt, do not now swell the congregations 
of Protestant church or conventicle. Their objections to 
the Church of Rome are objections equally to all forms of 
dogmatic and doctrinal Christianity. And so it has come 
about, that the old enemies are becoming friends in the 
j)resence of a common foe. Catholics speak tenderly of 
Protestants as keeping alive a belief in the creeds, and look 
forward to their return to the sheepfold ; while the old An- 
tichrist, the Scarlet A¥oman on the Seven Hills, drunk with 
the blood of the saints, is now treated by Protestantism as 
an older sister and a valiant ally in the great warfare with 
infidelity. The points of difference are forgotten; the 
points of union are passionately dwelt upon ; and the rem- 
nants of idolatry which the more ardent English Protestants 
once abhorred and denounced, are now regarded as having 
been providentially preserved as a means of making up the 
quarrel and bringing back the churches into communion. 
The dread of Poj^ery is gone. The ceremonial system, 
once execrated as a service of Satan, is regarded as a thing 
at worst indifferent, perhaps in itself desirable ; and even 
those who are conscious of no tendency to what they still 



Condition and Prospects of Protestantism, 133 

call corruption, are practically forsaking the fixith of their 
fathers, and reestablishing, so far as they can or dare, those 
very things which their fathers revolted against. 

These phenomena seem to say that Protestantism, as a 
body of positive doctrine, was not a discovery or rediscov- 
ery of truth — of truth as it exists from eternity, independ- 
ent of man's conception of it, but something temporary, 
something which the minds of men who were determined at 
;dl costs to have done with idolatry, threw out of themselves 
as a makeshift in the confusion — a passionate expression 
of their conviction' that God was a spirit, to be wor- 
shipped in spirit and in truth, and not with liturgies and 
formularies. In the desperate struggle for emancipation, 
their emotion took form in vehement and imaginative met- 
aphors, and these metaphors full of fire and force in an age 
which was in harmony with them, have become gradually, 
as times have changed, extravagant, unmeaning, and false. 
The outpourings of pious enthusiasm are addressed rather 
to the heart than to the head, and when taken out of their 
connection and shaped by cold theologians into articles of 
fiiith, they cannot stand the test, and fall to pieces. 

Whence, then, came the original power of Protestant- 
ism ? What was there about it which once had such ex- 
traordinary attraction for great and noble-minded men ? 
Enthusiasm does not make heroes, if it is enthusiasm for 
illusion. Some great genuine truth there must have been 
at stake in that tremendous conflagration, or it would have 
burnt out like a fire of straw. Something indisj^utably 
there was which the descendants of the Reformers have 
forgotten, and have lost their strength in forgetting it. In 
the Protestantism of a Latimer or a Knox there were two 
constituents. The positive part of it was the affirmation of 
the elementary truth of all religions, the obligation of obe- 
dience to the law of moral duty ; the second, or negative 
part, was a firm refusal to believe in lies, or to conceal or 
disguise their disbelief. All great spiritual movements 



134 Co7idition and Prospects of Protestantism. 

have started under tlie same conditions. They have their 
period of youth and vitality, their period of established 
usefulness, and in turn their j^eriod of petrifaction. Creeds, 
by the very law of their being, stiffen in time into form. 
Wherever external ceremonial observances are supposed to 
be in themselves meritorious or efficacious, the weight of 
the matter is sooner or later cast upon them. To sacrifice 
our corrupt inclinations is disagreeable and difficult. To 
sacrifice bulls and goats in one age, to mutter paternosters 
and go to a j^riest for absolution in another, is simple and 
easy. Priests themselves encourage a tendency which gives 
them consequence and authority. They need not be con- 
{y. scious rogues, but their convictions go along with their 
^' interests, and they believe easily what they desire that 
others should believe. So the process goes on, the moral 
element growing weaker and weaker, and at last dying out 
altogether. Men lose their horror of sin when a private 
arrangement with a confessor will clear it away. Religion 
becomes a contrivance to enable them to live for pleasure, 
and to lose nothing by it ; a hocus-pocus which God is 
supposed to have contrived to cheat the devil — a conglom- 
erate of half truths buried in lies. As soon as this point 
is reached the catastrophe is not far off. Conscience does 
not sleep. The better sort of men perceive more or less 
clearly that they are living upon illusions. They may not 
see their way to anything better. They may go on for 
awhile in outward conformity, but sooner or later some- 
thing occurs to make them speak, some unusually flagrant 
scandal, or some politically favorable opportunity for a 
change. A single voice has but to say the fitting word, 
and it is the voice not of one but of millions. In the hearts 
of all generous, high-minded persons, there is an instinctive 
hatred of falsehood : a sense that it is dreadful and horrible, 
and that they cannot and dare not bear with it. They had 
wanted bread, and they were fed with stones ; but the 
stones will not serve them longer, and they fall back on the 



Coiidttion and Prospects of Protest antisyn. 135 

original elementary moral certainties which are the natural 
food of their souls. 

The negative element is usually that which at the begin- 
ning most occupies them, which constitutes at once their 
honor and their peril. The positive element is simple and 
rapidly summed up ; nor in general does it contain the 
points for which the battle is being fought. The Re- 
formers' chief business always is to destroy falsehood, to 
drag down the temple of imposture where idols hold the 
place of the Almighty. 

The growth of Christianity at the beginning was pre- 
cisely this. The early martyrs did not suffer for profess- 
ing the name of Christ ; the Emperor Adrian had no 
objection to placing Christ in the Pantheon ; but they 
would not acknowledge the deities of the empire. They 
refused to call beings divine which were either demons or 
nothing. The first step in their conversion was the recog- 
nition that they were living in a lie, and the truth to which 
they bore witness in their deaths was not the mystery of 
the Incarnation, but simply that the gods of Greece and 
Rome were not gods at all. The thoughts of their Master 
and Saviour hovered before them in their tortures, and took 
from death its terrors ; but they died, it cannot be too 
clearly remembered, for a negation. The last confession 
before the praetor, the words on which their fate depended, 
were not "We do believe," but "We do not believe." 
" We will not, to save our miserable lives, take a lie be- 
tween our lips, and say we think what we do not think." 

The Reformation was yet more emphatically destructive. 
The very name Protestant was a declaration of revolt. It 
commenced with the repudiation of pardons and indul- 
gences, and the theory of the priesthood followed. The 
clergy professed to be a separate and sacred caste, to 
possess magical powers in virtue of their descent from the 
Apostles, and to be able to work invisible miracles by 
gestures and cabalistic sentences. The war passed raj)idly 



13G Condition and Prospects of Protedantism. 

to the central mystery of the Catholic fliith. Heaven did 
not interfere, so the Church fought for it, and went to work 
sword in hand to chastise the innovators. Where the}' 
could not resist they died ; and if we look over the trials 
of the Protestant confessors in Holland, France, or Eng- 
land, we find them condemned, not for their positive doc- 
trines of election, justification, or irresistible grace — the 
Church would have let them say what they pleased about 
curious paradoxes, which would have added but fresh prop- 
ositions to the creed, and furnished fresh material for faith 
— the Church destroyed them for insisting that bread was 
bread and wine was wine, and that a priest was no more a 
conjuror than a layman. And then to serious persons like 
John Frederick, and Coligny, and William the Silent, the 
question rose, should the Church be allowed to do this ? 
While the debate turned on intricacies of theology, they 
were uncertain, and were inclined to stand still. These 
great men did not quarrel with transubstantiation as a 
mere theological opinion. They were unwilling to embroil 
Christendom for words. They would have left opinion 
free, and allowed the liberty to others which they demanded 
for themselves. The burnings and massacres forced them 
into a sterner attitude. When towns began to be sacked, 
and women ravished and buried alive, and men by tens of 
thousands hanged, shot, roasted, torn in pieces, and babies 
tossed upon the pikes of Romish crusaders, a cause had 
risen which might well command the sympathies of every 
brave man : the cause of humanity against theology, the 
cause of God against the devil. It is idle to say that the 
Catholic cruelties of the sixteenth century rose from the 
spirit of the age. If the plea were true, the Papacy could 
not be held excused, for the Papacy claims to be inspired 
by God, and not by the temper of the times. But the age 
was not cruel till the Church made it so. The Reformers, 
before they were persecuted, never sought or desired more 
for themselves than toleration; they demanded merely 



Condition and Prospects of Protestantism. 137 

permission to think and speak tlieir own thoughts. If in 
isolated cases extreme fanatics followed the atrocious exam- 
l^les of the Catholics, it was because they had not wholly 
shaken off the si^irit of the creed in which they had been 
bred. But the judicial murders which can be laid to the 
charge of Protestants are as units where the Church is 
responsible for thousands. 

On obscure subjects on which certain knowledge is im- 
possible, it is at once inevitable and desirable that men 
should have different opmions. Such truth as we can hope 
to obtain on these matters is advanced and protected by 
discussion, and theological schools are not to be allowed to 
compensate by violence for the absence or weakness of ar- 
gument. That we should not be forced at the sword's point 
by a so-called authority to say that we believe what we do 
not believe, and deny the intelligence wliich God has given 
us, — this is what we have a right to demand, and Protest- 
antism, if the same circumstances return, will again com- 
mand our allegiance as heartily as ever. But the history of 
it tells us the secret of its strength as well as of its weak- 
ness. When the power to persecute was taken from the 
Church, when Protestantism became a system of positive 
opinion, contending for supremacy as soon as it had achieved 
toleration, when it showed a disposition to revive in its own 
favor the methods from which it had suffered, the tide which 
had carried it to victory ceased to flow. From that time 
forward it was contending for no great principle. It was 
contending only for its own formulas, which may or may 
not be true, but which are not proved to be true ; and, by 
parallel necessity, the weakness of the two creeds has de- 
veloped side by side. As Rome ceased to tyrannize from 
want of power, the positive Protestant lost the noblest of his 
allies, and lost hold in himself of the real principles for 
which the battle of the Reformation had been fought. 

The Reformer of the sixteenth century denied the power 
of the keys. It was decided that for himself and those who 



138 Condition and Prospects of Protestantism. 

went with liim, he had a right to say what he thought ; bul; 
he obtained no right to punish by disabilities or otherwise 
his neighbor who continued to believe in the keys ; and his 
own theories of justification were of little moment to those 
who preferred to remain in suspense on matters beyond 
comprehension. Luther, on the other hand, might have 
taught justification by faith if he would have left the priest- 
hood alone, just as the priests might have gone on teaching 
their own doctrines as long as they could get a congrega- 
tion to listen to them, if the Inquisition would have left the 
Protestants alone. The evil element in Catholicism which 
made good men so detest it, was not that it held a theory of 
its own on the relation between God and man, but that it 
r murdered everybody who would not agree with it. The 
work of the Reformation was done when sjjeculative opin- 
ion was declared free. The lay intelligence of the world 
/ cares at all times more for justice than theology, and it left 
" the Protestants to fight their own battles with their own 
arguments, as soon as it had secured them fair play. 

The contrast between the negative and positive principles, 
— the power of the first and the weakness of the second, — 
has become increasingly apparent in every successive gen- 
eration. 

As long as Jesuitism continued powerful in Spain and 
Austria, — as long as the old regime was maintained in 
France, and want of orthodoxy in Catholic countries was 
directly or indirectly treated as a crime, — the cause of 
Protestantism was more or less the cause of liberty. The 
revolutions at the close of the eighteenth century completed 
the work of the sixteenth. The last poison fangs of the old 
serpent were drawn ; it was left a harmless creature, whose 
crimes were things of the past ; and it became venerable to 
sentimentalism for its feebleness and its antiquity. Other 
questions arose to agitate the intellect of the thinking por- 
tion of mankind, which timid Protestants found as danger- 
ous to their own speculations as they were dangerous to 



Condition and Prospects of Protestantism. 139 

what was left of Romanism. They forgot their ancient 
abhorrence of falsehood. Propositions which they came into 
being to deny have become more tolerable to them than a 
further advance on the road to freedom. They have quar- 
reled with their best friends. They have ceased to protest ; 
and on many sides, and in a thousand subtle ways, they are 
making advances to their old antagonist, and endeavoring to 
unite their forces with his against " the infidel spirit of the 
age." 

The sacramental system means something, or it means 
nothing. It is true, or it is false. The English Evangel- 
icals used to answer in clear ringing tones for the second 
alternative. There was no playing with words, no senti- 
ment, no mystification. They insisted sternly and firmly that 
material forms were not and could not be a connecting link 
between God and the human soul. The English High 
Churchman was less decided in his words, but scarcely less 
so in his practice. He was contented to use the ambiguous 
formulas which the Reformation left in the liturgy ; but he 
confined his " celebrations " to four times a j^ear. He re- 
garded the Anglican ceremonial generally rather as some 
thing established by law which it was his business to carry out 
than as a set of rites to which he attached a meaninoj. Hioh 
Churchmen have discovered now that the mystic body in the 
Eucharist is in the hands as well as the heart of the believer. 
They pine for more frequent communions as the food of 
their spiritual existence. They are gliding rapidly into the 
positive affirmation of the doctrine which Latimer and Rid- 
ley were executed for denying. The Evangelicals shrink 
from being behindhand. They have lost confidence in them- 
selves ; they play with mysticism, and admit that things 
untrue in one sense may be true in another. They are 
patching their garments from the rags which their fathers 
cast away, anxious rather to maintain their party than their 
principles, as the Tories- steal the [)olicy of the Radicals to 
keep their Cabinet in ofiice. 



140 Condition and Prospects of Protestantism. 

The predominant feature in the English Reformation 
was the abridgment of the special prerogatives of the clergy. 
From a position of almost supremacy, they were reduced 
into the servants of the State. They were made to feel that 
they were not a separate order, deriving their authority 
from the Apostles, and raised above the laity by privileges 
or prerogative or special spiritual powers, but were a 
part of the general community, with particular duties to 
perform. And they had learnt their lesson. They had 
come at last, after many vicissitudes, to understand and 
accept the new order of things. Men now in middle 
life remember the rector of their childhood as a higher 
kind of squire, — and often combining the two characters. 
He was justice of the peace ; he took his share in general 
local business ; he attended sessions and county meetings ; 
he farmed his glebe or his estate ; he was to all intents and 
purposes a well educated country gentleman, with a higher 
moral standard than the laity round him, fulfilling admira- 
bly well the obligations of his station, and possessed of all 
the influence which naturally belonged to it. 

The type is fast changing, and will soon be extinct, — 
much for the better, as we are told in newspapers, and 
bishops' charges. The clergy of all persuasions attend 
now exclusively to their spiritual functions. The incumbent 

of is no longer to be seen, like his predecessors, on the 

board of magistrates in the next town. He is reading daily 
service at his church ; he is at the Convocation House at 
Westminster ; he is making speeches at a missionary meet- 
ing, or addressing his diocesan on the enormities of Bishop 
Colenso. He wears a long coat and a peculiar waistcoat, 
and curtails his shirt collars. He cuts his ap^Darel as near 
as he dares after the Catholic fashion, and aspires to match 
the priest at his own weapons. He is once more profes- 
sional. He is one of an order which he hopes to restore to 
its dignities, and he looks back on the secular parson, who 
hunted and shot and went to cricket-matches and election 



Condition mid Prospects of Protestantism, 141 

dinners, as a monster of the dark ages. The secular parson 
shared the pleasures as well as the occupations of his neigh- 
bor. He was no better than a layman. The modern clergy 
prefer the earlier condition, and desire to be once more a 
priesthood. We hear of few moral scandals among them. 
They are, as a class, devoted, self-sacrificing, hard-worked 
men, and, in an age more than ever given ujd to money- 
making, they are contented with the wages of an uj^per ser- 
vant. But what j:hey lose in secular position they asjjire to 
recover in spiritual authority ; and whatever else we may 
conjecture about their future, it is quite certain that they 
will not long remain members of a Church established and 
governed by the State. Either they must drop their pre- 
tensions, or the Established Church will cease to be. They 
may preach more doctrine than their fathers ; it may be 
that they preach more truth ; but they know infinitely less 
of the people under their charge ; and they in turn are less 
appreciated by their peojDle. There are no longer independ- 
ent points of contact between men who have no common 
occupations ; and in town and country, notwithstanding the 
multiplication of churches, the revival of architecture, the 
religious newspapers and magazines, and the increased talk 
about religion everywhere, the practical influence of the i 
clergy diminishes daily, and they know it is so, and know ^ 
not why it is. 

To those who like ourselves have no expectation of any 
good coming to us either from politics or science, unless 
statesmen and philosophers have some kind of faith in God, 
the outlook is not a happy one. The reaction towards 
Romanism, Anglo- Catholicism, or whatever it is called, is 
probably temporary — a mere eddy in the tide. It would 
not have arisen among us at all, except for the ignorance of 
modern history, which still accompanies our highest educa- 
tion. The Calvinistic and Lutheran Reformation ao;reed 
on one point at least — that the magical power supposed to ■- 
belong to the clergy had no existence. It treated their 



142 Condition and Prospects of Protestantism, 

absolution as imiDOsture. It regarded their sacraments, in 
the form which they had assumed, as mere idolatry, their 
whole conception of Christianity as false from the root. 
It is now pretended that in England the priest theory was 
retained in a modified form, and peoj)le who hold that 
theory maintain that the English Church is a great deal 
nearer Rome than to the Presbyterians or Continental 
Protestants. 

It is certain, nevertheless, that however politicians for 
State purposes might choose to adjust the Anglican organ- 
ization, there would have been no such thing as the English 
Reformation, except for those among us who did not be- 
lieve in j^riests at all. 

The first step of the English Parliament was to break the 
spine of sacerdotal assumption. They allowed its ghost to 
hover about the service-book, but on condition that it 
should never take substantial form again. Nor can Eng- 
land be separated in any real sense from the reformed 
States abroad. English, Dutch, French, Germans, fought 
side by side for the liberties of Europe, against an enemy 
which neither acknowledged nor acknowledges that there is 
any distinction between them. If England was in any way 
singled out, it was as the country where the Protestant her- 
esy had taken strongest and deepest root. Had Protestant- 
ism been trampled down in Holland and Germany, the 
apostolic succession of her bishops would not have saved 
England from the same fate ; and as a feature in the relig- 
ious history of mankind, the Reformation everywhere must 
be considered as one movement. If it was a good thing, all 
who broke off from Rome shared the honor ; if it was an 
evil thing, all were equally guilty. 

Are we then tol)elieve that the Reformation was an evil 
thing ? Let us have a plain answer. If Dr. Pusey will not 
tell us, we must appeal to general intelligence. Looking at 
the deeds that were done in the sixteenth century, and at 
the men who did them — looking at the character of the 



Condition and Prospects of Protestantism, 143 

leaders on both sides, on the conditions of the struggle, and 
on the spirit in which the battle was fought out — can a 
doubt, we ask, be fairly entertained on which side the right 
was lying ? A Catholic who has been bred up in the atmos- 
phere of his creed, who has learned history from Lingard 
and Audin, and whose later studies have been controlled by 
the Index, may entertain an unshaken faith in the immacu- 
late Church, which can err neither in judgment nor in action. 
A Howard or a Ker may cling to a cause for which his an- 
cestors fought and suffered, which is identified with the tra- 
ditions of his family, which at one time was the cause of the 
aristocracy against the Revolution. But when educated 
Protestants turn Romanists or Anglo- Catholics, and profess 
to hate the Reformation, they imply that they regard Coligny 
as a rebellious schismatic, and Catherine de Medici and her 
litter of hyena cubs as on the side of providence and justice ; 
they take part with a Duke of Alva against William the 
Silent, with Mary Stuart against Knox and Murray. And 
such a phenomenon, we repeat, can only be explained by 
the system of instruction at our English Universities, where 
we are taught accurately the constitution of Servius Tullius, 
but where we never hear of the Act of Supremacy, and 
find it an open question whether Latimer was not a raving 
fanatic, and Cranmer a sycophant and a scoundrel. 

Let there be no mistake about this. Not only those who 
are becoming Catholics, but those also who are setting the 
Church of England upon stilts, and praying for the reunion 
of Christendom, must equally condemn the Reformation. 
They regard the Continental Protestant as a schismatic, and 
his revolt from the Catholic Church as a crime. The An- 
glo-Catholics palliate the separation of their own Church of 
England, on the plea merely that it was kept providentially 
from lapsing into heresy, and they do not care to conceal 
their contempt and hate for the persons of the Reformers. 
Yet, all this time, the so-called '" horrors of the French Rev- 
olution " were a mere bagatelle, a mere summer shower, by 



14 1 Conditio?! and Prospects of Protestantism. 

the side of the atrocities committed in the name of religion, 
and with the sanction of the Catholic Church. 
- The Jacobin Convention of 1793-94 may serve as a meas- 
ure to show how mild- are the most ferocious of mere human 
beings when compared to an exasperated priesthood. By 
the September massacre, by the guillotine, by the fusillade 
at Lyons, and by the drownings on the Loire, five thousand 
men and women at the utmost suffered a comparatively 
easy death. Multiply the five thousand by ten, and you do 
not reach the number of those who were murdered in 
France alone in the two months of August and September, 
1572. Fifty thousand Flemings and Germans are said to 
have been hanged, burnt, or buried alive under Charles the 
Fifth. Add to this the long agony of the Netherlands in 
the revolt from Philip, the Thirty Years' War in Germany, 
the ever-recurring massacres of the Huguenots, and remem- 
ber that the Catholic religion alone was at the bottom of all 
these horrors, that the crusades against the Huguenots 
especially were solemnly sanctioned by successive jDopes, 
and that no word of censure ever issued from the Vatican 
except in the brief intervals when statesmen and soldiers 
grew weary of bloodshed, and looked for means to admit the 
heretics to grace. 

With this infernal business before men's eyes, it requires 
no common intellectual courage to believe that God was on 
the side of the people who did such things — to believe that 
He allowed his cause to be defended by devils — while He 
permitted also good and brave men, who had originally no 
sympathy with Protestantism, to be driven into it by the 
horrible fruits of the old creed. 

If this be true, then indeed, as an Oxford Professor 
tells us, our human conceptions of justice and goodness 
are no measure of what those words mean when applied to 
God. Then indeed we are in worse case than if the throne 
of heaven was empty, and we had no Lord and father 
there at all. "I had rather be an atheist," says Bacon, 



Condition and Prospects of Protestantism. 145 

" than believe in a god who devours his children." The 
blackest osre in a nearo fetish is a benevolent ano-el com- 
pared to a god who can be supposed to have sanctioned 
the massacre of St. Bartholomew. 

It is an old story that men make God after their own 
image. Their conception of his nature reflects only their 
own passions. - Theological fury in the sixteenth century 
turned human creatures into fiends, and they in turn 
made God into a fiend also. The Neo-Catholics of our 
own day, while they will not disclaim the God of Gregory 
XIII., have softened the outlines, but have failed to add 
to its dignity. The divinity of the Ritualistic imagination 
abandons the world and all its pursuits, cares nothing for 
the eiForts of science to unfold the mysteries of the crea- 
tion, or to remove the primeval curse by the amelioration 
of the condition of humanity — all these it leaves to the 
unconverted man. It takes delight in incense, and cere- 
monies, and fine churches, and an extended episcopate, and 
for the rest is occuj^ied in its own world, and in helping 
priests to work invisible miracles. The Evangelical, far 
nobler than these, yet embarrassed still with his doctrines 
of rejDrobation, forms a theory which has some lineaments 
of superhuman beauty, but, unable to rid himself of the 
savage element left behind by Calvin, offers us a Saviour 
at once all merciful and without mercy — a Saviour whose 
pity will not reject the darkest sinner from his grace, yet to 
those whose perplexed minds cannot accept as absolutely 
and exhaustively true the " scheme of salvation " deals 
harder measure than the Holy Oflfice of Seville. The 
heretic, in the auto-da-fe, endured but a few moments of 
agony. The Calvinist preacher consigns him without a 
shudder to an eternity of flames. Faith is the cry of all 
theologians. Believe with us and you will be saved ; refuse 
to believe and you are lost. Yet they know nothing of 
what belief means. They dogmatize, but they fail to per- 
suade ; and they are entangled in the old dilemma which 
10 



146 Condition and Prospecp of Protestantism. 

xfaith alone can encounter and despise. " Ant non vult 
p'toUere malum aut nequit. Si non vult, non est bonus ; si 
nequit, non est omnipotens." 

In the present alienation of the higher intellect from 
religion, it is impossible to foresee how soon or from what 
quarter any better order of things is to be looked for. We 
spoke of an eddy in the stream, but there are " tides in the 
affairs of men " which run long and far. The phenomena 
of spirit-rapping show us that the half-educated multi- 
tudes in England and America are ready for any super- 
stition. Scientific culture seems inclined to run after the 
will-o'-the-wisp of positivism ; and as it is certain that 
ordinary persons will not live without a belief of some 
kind, superstition has a fair field before it ; and England, 
if not Europe generally, may perhaps witness in the com- 
ing century some great Catholic revival. It is a possi- 
bility which the decline of Protestantism compels us to 
contemplate, and it is more easy to foresee the ultimate 
result than the means by which its returning influence 
can be effectually combated. Catholicism has learnt 
nothing and forgotten nothing. It is tolerant now be- 
cause its strength is broken. It has been fighting for 
bare existence, and its demands at present are satisfied 
with fair play. But let it once have a numerical majority 
behind it, and it will reclaim its old authority. It will 
again insist on controlling all departments of knowledge. 
The principles on which it persecuted it still professes, 
and persecution will grow again as naturally and neces- 
sarily as a seed in a congenial soil. Then it will once 
more come in collision with the secular intelligence which 
now passes by it with disdain. The struggle ended in 
blood before ; and it will end in blood again, with further 
results not difficult to anticipate. 

We are indulging, perhaps, in visionary fears ; but if 
experience shows that in the long run reason will prevail, 
it shows also that reason has a hard fight for it ; and in 



Condition and Prospects of Protestantism. 147 

the minds even of the most thoughtful rarely holds an 
undisputed empire. We expect no good from the theory 
of human things with which men of intellect at present 
content themselves. We look for little satisfaction to our 
souls from sciences which are satisfied with phenomena, 
or much good to our bodies from social theories of utility 
— utility meaning the gratification of the five senses in 
largest measure by the greatest number. We believe that 
human beings can only live and prosper together on the 
condition of the recognition of dutf/, and duty has no 
meaning and no sanction except as imj)lying responsibility 
to a power above and beyond humanity. As long as the 
moral force bequeathed to us by Christianity remains, the 
idea of obligation survives in the conscience. The most 
emancipated philosopher is still dominated by its influence, 
and men continue substantially Christians while they be- 
lieve themselves to be only Benthamites. But the feeble- i 
ness of Protestantism wUl do its work of disintegration at ;' 
last, and a social system which has no religion left in it ' 
will break down like an uncemented arch. 

We have no hope from theologians, to whatever school 
they may belong. They and all belonging to them are , 
given over to their own dreams, and they cling to them with / 
a i^assion j)roportionate to the weakness of their arguments. 

There is yet a hope — it is but a faint one — that the 
laity, who are neither divines nor philosophers, may take 
the matter into their own hands, as they did at the Refor- 
mation. If Catholicism can revive, far more may Protest- 
antism revive, if only it can recover the spirit which gave 
it birth. Religion may yet be separated from opinion, and 
brought back to life. For fixed opiaions on questions 
beyond our reach, we may yet exchange the certainties of 
human duty ; and no longer trusting ourselves to so-called 
economic laws, which are no more laws than it is a law 
that an unweeded garden becomes a wilderness of stinging 
nettles, we may place practical religion once more on the 



148 Condition and Prospects of Protestantism, 



throne of society. There may lie before us a future of 
moral progress which will rival or eclipse our material 
splendor ; or that material splendor itself may be destined 
to perish in revolution. Which of those two fates lies now 
before us depends on the attitude of the English laity 
towards theological controversy in the present and the next 
generation. 



ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES. 



During the last quarter of a century, nearly four million 
British subjects — English, Irish, and Scots — have become 
citizens, more or less prosperous, of the United States of 
America. We have no present quarrel with the Ameri- 
cans ; we trust most heartily that we may never be in- 
volved in any quarrel with them ; but undoubtedly from 
the day that they became independent of us, they became 
our rivals. They constitute the one great power whose 
interests and whose pretensions compete with our own, and 
in so for as the strength of nations depends on the number 
of thrivmg men and women composing them, the United 
States have been made stronger, the English empire 
weaker, to the extent of those millions and the children 
growing of them. The process is still continuing. Emi- 
gration remains the only practical remedy for the evils of 
Ireland. England and Scotland contain as many people 
as in the present condition of industry they can hold. The 
annual increase of the population has to be drafted off and 
disposed of elsewhere, and while the vast proportion of it 
continues to be directed on the shores of the Republic, 
those who leave us, leave us for the most part resenting the 
indifference with which their loss is regarded. They part 
from us as from a hard stepmother. They are exiles from 
a country which was the home of their birth ; which th(iy 
had no desire to leave, but which drives them from her at 
the alternative of starvation. 

England at the same time possesses dependencies of her 
1 Fraser's Magazine, January, 1870. 



150 Migland and her Colonies. 

own, not less extensive than the United States, not less rich 
in natural resources, not less able to provide for these 
expatriated swarms, where they would remain attached 
to her Crown, where theu' well-being would be our \\ ell- 
being, their brains and arms our brains and arms, every 
acre which they could reclaim from the wilderness so much 
added to English soil, and themselves and their families 
fresh additions to our national stability. 

And yet we are told by politicians — by some directly in 
woi'ds, by almost all in the apathy with which they stand 
by and look on — that the direction of our emigration is of 
not the slightest consequence to us, that there is no single 
point in which an emigrant who settles on the Murray or 
the St. Lawrence, is of more value to us than one who 
prefers the Mississippi. In either case, if he does well for 
himself, he becomes a purchaser of English goods, and in 
this capacity alone is he of use to us. Our interest in him, 
so far as we acknowledge an interest, is that he should go 
wherever he can better himself most rapidly, and consume 
the largest quantity of English calico and hardware in his 
household. It is even argued that our colonies are a 
burden to us, and that the sooner they are cut adrift from 
us the better. They are, or have been, demonstratively 
loyal. They are proud of their origin, conscious of the 
value to themselves of being part of a great emj^ire, and 
willing and eager to find a home for every industrious 
family that we can spare. We answer impatiently that 
they are welcome to our people if our people choose to go 
to them, but whether they go to them or to America, 
whether the colonies themselves remain under our flag or 
proclaim their independence or attach themselves to some 
other power, is a matter which concerns themselves en- 
tirely, and to us of profound indifference. 

Such an attitude of a government towards its subjects 
is so strange, so unexampled in the history of mankind, 
that the meaning of it deserves study if only as a political 



England and her Colonies. 151 

curiosity. Tlie United States lias just spent six hundred 
millions of money and half a million lives in preserving 
their national unity. The Russians, when they find a 
pressure of population in Finland, load their ships of war 
with as many as desire to emigrate, and give them homes 
on the Amoor River. English subjects were once so 
precious in the eyes of our government, that we did not 
allow them so much as a right to change their allegiance. 
When we look down the emigration tables we find only the 
Germans who are doing anything in the least resembling 
what we are doing, and the Germans cannot help them- 
selves, for they have no colonies. America is not a rival 
of Germany, and the strengthening of America threatens no 
interest of any German State. Had Prussia settlements in 
one hemisphere and France in another, do we supj^ose the 
Court of Berlin would see the peasants from the Elbe and 
the Oder denationalize themselves without an effort to 
reclaim them ? No intelligent person will believe it. The 
Spaniards and French indeed parted with tens of thousands 
of their artisans to England during the wars of religion, 
but they did not part with them willingly, nor was the 
result of the experiment such as to tempt a repetition of it. 
It used to be considered that the first of all duties in an 
English citizen was his duty to his country. His country 
in return was bound to preserve and care for him. What 
change has passed over us, that allegiance can now be 
shifted at pleasure like a suit of clothes .'' Is it from some 
proud consciousness of superabundant strength? Are our 
arms so irresistible that we have no longer an enemy to 
fear? Is our prosperity so overflowing and the continu- 
ance of it so certain, that we can now let it flow from us 
elsewhere because we can contain no more ? Our national 
arrogance will scarcely presume so far. Is 'it that the 
great Powers of the world have furled their battle-flags ? 
Is the parliament of man on the way to be constituted, and 
is the rivalry of empires to be confined for the future to 



152 Engla7id and her Colonies, 

competition in the arts of peace ? Never at any period 
in the world's history was so large a share of the profits of 
industry expended upon armies and arms. Is it so certain 
that we shall never be entangled again in the quarrels of 
the Continent? Let the fresh engagements answer, into 
which we have been compelled to enter, guaranteeing the 
independence of Belgium. Let the fresh Black Sea em- 
barrassment answer, from which we have barely escaped 
with honor. Is it that the experience of the results of the 
emigration to America so far has been so satisfactory as to 
convince us that we have no occasion to interfere with its 
direction ? The Irish in Australia and New Zealand are as 
well-disposed towards us as the rest of the colonists. The 
Irish in America are our bitterest enemies. The Irish 
vote will be given unanimously for war with us if at any 
time any question between the two countries becomes 
critical ; and their presence in America, and the influence 
which they are supposed to possess there, is the immediate 
cause of the present humor of Ireland itself. The millions 
who fled from the famine carried with them the belief that 
it was England which in one shape or other was the 
cause of their misery ; that it was England which was 
driving them from their homes. The land was theirs, and 
we had taken it from them, and therefore they were starv- 
ing. It was their belief then. It is their belief now. 
Nine parts of it may be absurd, but one part is reasonable. 
We had superseded Irish law and Irish methods of manage- 
ment by English law and English methods of management. 
Landlords holding under our system had allowed the popu- 
lation to outgrow the legitimate resources of the country, 
because, while the potato lasted, subdivision increased their 
rents without cost to themselves, and then when the change 
came, and the landlords' interests lay the other way, they 
said to their tenants, " There is no room for you here ; you 
are not wanted ; you are an expense and a trouble to us ; 
and you must go." Their removal in itself was inevitable. 



England and her Colonies, 153 

In many instances, perhaps in most, the cost of the removal 
was paid for them, but they identified the system under 
which they suffered with EngUsh tyranny ; and they went 
away with hate in their hearts and curses on their lips. 
Those who went hated us because they were obliged to go. 
Those who stayed behind hate us because ftithers have lost 
their sons, and sisters brothers, and friends have been 
parted from friends. And now we have Fenianism upon 
us, saying openly we dare not put it down, for America will 
not allow us. 

We did not make the potato famine. We could not fight 
with nature, or alter the irreversible relation between land 
and food. Civilization brings with it always an overgrowth 
of people ; for civilization means the policeman, and the 
policeman means that the natural increase of population 
shall not be held in check by murder and fighting and rob- 
bery. In all ranks families have to learn to be separated. 
England suffers from it as much as Ireland, and does not 
complain. This is quite true. But if when the famine 
came we had said to the Irish peasants, " Through no fault 
of yours a terrible calamity has fallen upon you ; there are 
more of you living on the land than the land will support, 
and we take blame to ourselves, for we ought (or those who 
by our means are j^laced above you ought) to have pre- 
vented the multiplication of you where the decay of a single 
root might be your destruction ; when we look back upon 
our management of Ireland, we cannot acquit ourselves of 
being responsible for you ; and therefore, as you must go 
away, we will give you land elsewhere ; we will take you 
there and settle you, and help you to live till you can main- 
tain yourselves," — if we had said this, there would have been 
at least a consciousness that we had done our best to soften 
their misfortunes. The million that we might have sent to 
Canada or Australia would have drawn after them the mil- 
lions that have followed. Our colonies would have doubled 
their population, and there would have been no Irish vote 



154 England and her Colonies. 

in America for party demagogues to flatter by threats of 
England, and no Fenianism at home. 

We are told that government has no business with emi- 
gration ; that emigration, like wages, prices, and profits, 
must be left to settle itself, according to laws of nature. 
Human things are as much governed by laws of nature as 
a farm or a garden, neither less nor more. If we cultivate 
a field, it will yield us corn or green crops. The laws of na- 
ture will as assuredly overgrow it with docks and nettles if 
we leave it to govern itself. The settlement of Ulster un- 
der James I. was an act of government ; yet it was the only 
measure which ever did good to Ireland. The removal of a 
million poor creatures to Canada, and the establishment of 
them there, would have been under present circumstances 
considerably more easy. It was a question of money 
merely. To send them to Canada might have cost, perhaps, 
as much as the Abyssinian War. Had we feared they might 
cross the border after all into the States, and had preferred 
Australia or the Cape for them, it might have cost a little 
more, and it would have probably turned out on the whole 
a profitable investment. Trade follows the flag. We con- 
sider the Americans to be good customers, but they import 
only ten shillings' worth of our manufactures per head in 
proportion to the population. The imports of the Austra- 
lian colonies are at the rate of £10 per head. English cap- 
ital is locked up, or flowing away into Continental loans. 
The high rate of interest in America is due wholly to the 
extent of land there, which yields profits so enormous and 
so certain when reclaimed and cultivated. We have the 
same resource in no less abundance. We have land, we 
have capital, we have labor. Yet we seem to have neither 
the ability nor the desire to bring them together, and de- 
velop their results. We are told persistently by a powerful 
school of politicians, that the colonies as colonies are of no 
use to us, that we can look with entire indifference on their 
separation from us, and their adoption of any future course 
wliich may seem best to themselves. 



England, mid her Colonies. 155 

What is the meaning of so strange a conclusion ? 

Many explanations can be given of it. There is a certain 
vague cosmopolitanism growing up among us. Patriotism 
is no longer recognized as the supreme virtue which once it 
Avas believed to be. " Prejudice in favor of England," that 
proud belief in England which made men ready to sacrifice 
themselves and all belonging to them in the interests of 
their country, is obsolete and out of fashion. It is not 
uncommon to hear Liberal ]3oliticians express an opinion, 
without much regret, that England has had its day ; that her 
fighting days are over ; that, like the old 2'emeraire, she has 
nothing now to look for but to be towed into her last rest- 
ing-place ; that a hundred years hence her greatest achieve- 
ment will be considered to be having given birth to America. 
A more respectable theory is that we are still sufficient for 
ourselves, that we have enormous resources yet undeveloped 
at home, if government will but let the people alone, and 
leave trade and manufacture to take their course. There 
is the overwork of public men, who catch gladly at an 
excuse for shaking off unnecessary trouble. And there is 
the constitution of the Colonial Office, which undoubtedly 
has shown itself incapable of managing effectively our dis- 
tant dependencies, the chiefs of the colonial as of all other 
departments being selected not for special acquaintance 
with the subject, but for the convenience of political parties, 
being changed repeatedly with changes of government, and 
being unable therefore to carry out a consistent policy, or 
even to gain intelligent insight into their business. Again, 
there has been an impression that in case of war the colo- 
nies would be an embarrassment to us ; that Canada, as long 
as it is ours, is a possible cause of quarrel with the United 
States ; and that if we were quit of it we should be at once 
in less danger of war, and if war came should be better able 
to defend ourselves. 

On the whole, however, there are two main causes under- 
lying the rest which beyond all others have alienated public 



156 England and her Colonies. 

opinion from our colonies generally, and have created that 
general apathy of which the attitude of statesmen is but a 
symbol. 

The first is the position recently assumed towards us by 
some of the colonies themselves ; the second an opinion de- 
liberately conceived on the political situation of England and 
and on the future which we should anticipate and labor for. 
The colonies no longer answer the purjDOses for which, 
when originally founded, we made them useful. When the 
States of the Union were British provinces, we sent there 
not so much our surplus population as those whose presence 
among us was inconvenient, our felons, rebels, and political 
and religious refugees. As they prospered, we made them 
profitable to us. They were the chief markets for our Afri- 
can Negro trade, and we paid no -attention to their objec- 
tions to slavery. We went on to tax them. They revolted, 
and were lost to us. We supplied their places. In Canada, 
Australia, New Zealand, the Cape of Good Hope, and else- 
where, we possessed ourselves of territories as valuable as 
those which had separated from us. In these places, or in 
some of them, so long as they would allow us, we continued 
to dispose of our convicts. Taught by experience we 
avoided our past faults — we avoided them, that is, in the 
identical form for wliich we had paid so dearly — but so far 
as we dared we still administered their interests for our own 
convenience. We held their patronage, we disposed of 
their waste lands, we became involved in endless disputes 
with them, and this too came to an end. They refused to 
be demoralized -by our felons ; we submitted and kept them 
to ourselves. They claimed their lands; we abandoned 
them. They desired to fill their public offices with their 
own people ; we parted with what had been an agreeable 
provision for younger brothers or political partisans. We 
surrendered all the privileges which had been immediately 
profitable ; and finally, to close all disputes, we left them to 
govern themselves in whatever way seemed good to them. 



England and her Colonies. 157 

We gave them constitutions on the broadest basis which 
popular i3hilosophers recommended. We limited our rights 
over them to the continuance of the titular sovereignty of 
the Crown, to the nomination of a governor whose powers 
were controlled by the local legislature ; and we maintained 
regiments among them to fight their battles when they fell 
into trouble with their neighbors. The advantage now was 
all on their side. They became a weight upon the English 
taxpayer. They relieved us of our emigrants, such of them 
as they could get, but America was ready to take our emi- 
grants and to ask nothing of us in return. Their govern- 
ments, the creation of universal suffrage, embroiled us in 
wars, putting us to expense in defense of proceedings which 
yvQ neither advised nor apj^roved. The Canadians, while 
they expected us to protect them against the United States, 
levied duties on English manufactures for their own reve- 
nues. Relations such as these could not and cannot con- 
tinue, and English politicians living from hand to mouth, and 
courting popularity by anxiety for English pockets, have 
declined to subsidize the colonies further, or relieve them of 
expenses or duties which they can discharge for themselves. 
We have told the New Zealanders that if they covet the 
Maoris' lands, they must raise troops of their own to take 
them. We have said generally that we will not undertake 
the defense of the colonies except in wars of our own mak- 
ing, and that if the colonies do not like the conditions they 
are welcome to sever the connection. 

Undoubtedly there is much in this way of putting the 
case which is jprimd facie reasonable. The colonies are 
offended. They declare themselves ardently attached to 
England. They say they are j^roud of belonging to us, 
and they call on England to reciprocate their affection, 
and they are astonished and hurt at what they regard as 
an injurious return. Rejected love, they tell us, curdles 
into enmity. A distinguished Australian reminds us that 
the Alabama quarrel is even now embittered by a re- 



158 England and her Colonies. 

membrance of the tea duties. We ask with wonder what 
possible resemblance can be found between taxing colonies 
against their will and leaving them to the absolute disposal 
of their own fortunes. Still the colonies are not satisfied. 
They fail in any way to answer the argument, unless by 
reproaching us for being blind to what they conceive to be 
our own interests, but there is a rankling feeling of injus- 
tice somewhere. They make common cause with one 
another. Australia takes up the wrongs of New Zealand, 
and both resent the frankness with which we discuss a 
probable separation of Canada. If they have to leave us 
in their present humor they hint that they can no longer be 
our friends. Affection cannot subside into indifference. 
The spretce injuria for mce festers into ill-will. 

When there are differences of this kind, the right is 
seldom wholly on one side. Taken literally, nothing can 
be more unlike than our past conduct to America, and 
our present attitude towards New Zealand. Yet situations 
never exactly repeat themselves, and the same spirit may 
exhibit itself in more forms than one. In our present 
relations with our colonies, as well as in our j^ast, we are 
charged with considering or having considered nothing 
but our own immediate interest. It is true that we have 
never yet acknowledged that the colonies are of more than 
external moment to us. Till now, and especially since the 
establishment of Free Trade,, there has been room in Eng- 
land itself for the expansion of the people. The colonies 
see or think they see that we have gone as far as we can 
go that way ; they consider themselves infinitely impor- 
tant to us, and our determined blindness adds point to the 
offense. We taxed New England, they say, for our own 
convenience ; for the same reason, and equally unwisely, we 
are throwing off them. We made use of them, while they 
left us their patronage and consented to be convict stations ; 
when we cannot use them any more in this way, we bid 
them go about their business, although they are English- 



Englayid and her Colonies. 159 

men like ourselves, as if Englishmen might be told pru- 
dently that if they had real or imagined grievances we did 
not want them, and that they were free to change their 
allegiance. Interest, however, is not the only bond by 
which nations are held together. Patriotism may be sen- 
timentalism, but it is a sentimentalism nevertheless which 
lies at the root of every powerful nationality, and has been 
the principle of its coherence and its growth. Our practi- 
cal differences with the colonies would have been found 
easy to set right had there been a real desire to adjust 
them, but we have not recognized their attachment to us 
as of serious consequence. We lost the North American 
States. The world thought that we were ruined, and we 
found ourselves as strong as before. We have come to 
believe that we are sufficient for ourselves, that we can 
keep our Indian empire and maintain our rank among 
other nations out of the resources of our own two islands. 
We imagine that all which our colonists can do for us is to 
become pvirchasers of our manufactures, and wdiether de- 
pendent or independent they will need equally shirts and 
blankets, and Sheffield and Birmingham hardware. 

The England of the future, as pictured in the imagina- 
tion of the sanguine Liberal statesman, is to be the empo- 
rium of the world's trade, and an enormous workshop for 
all mankind. With supplies of the best iron or coal, which 
if not inexhaustible will last our time and our children's 
and grandchildren's, with the special aptitude of the 
English at once for mechanical art and for navigation, we 
consider that we can defy competition, and multiply indefi- 
nitely our mills and furnaces and ships. Our great cities 
are to grow greater ; there is no visible limit to the devel- 
opment of our manufactures ; we can rely upon them with 
confidence to supply a population far larger than we have 
at present. Our exports in 1862 were more than double 
what we exported in 1842. They may have doubled again 
twenty years hence, and once more by the end of the 



160 England and her Colonies. 

century. Civilization spreads with railroad speed ; each 
year opens new markets to us ; and with the special ad- 
vantages which no other nation combines in equal measure 
we imagine that we have nothing to fear. Trade may 
occasionally fluctuate. There may be years when our 
prosperity may seem arrested or even threaten a decline — ■ 
but in all instances such partial checks have been followed 
by a splendid rebound. The tide is still flowing in our 
favor, and we see no reason to fear that English com- 
mercial enterprise in any direction whatever is approaching 
its limits. Confident in ourselves, we have thus looked 
with indifference on our dependencies in other continents, 
or on the opposite side of the globe. If they prefer to 
adhere to us we do not propose to drive them off. If they 
wish to leave us we are prepared neither to resist nor 
remonstrate. We make them understand that whether 
they go or stay they are masters of their own fortunes. 
They are practically self-governed, and with self-govern- 
ment they must accept its responsibilities ; above all things 
they must make no demands on the heavily burdened 
English taxpayers. 

The first question to be asked about all this is, whether 
our confidence is justified ; whether the late rate of in- 
crease in our trade is really likely to continue. There are 
symptoms which suggest, if not fear, yet at least mis- 
giving. Success in trade on so great a scale depends on 
more than natural advantages ; it depends on the use that 
is made of them ; it depends on our reputation for honesty ; 
and English reputation, it is needless to say, is not what 
it used to be. The rage to become rich has infected all 
classes. Railway companies, banking companies, joint- 
stock trading companies, have, within these few last years, 
ftillen to shameful wreck, dragging thousands of families 
down to ruin. The investigation into the causes of these 
failures has brought out transactions which make ordinary 
people ask whither English honesty has gone. Yet there 



England and her Colonies. 161 

has been no adequate punishment of the principal offenders, 
nor does any punishment seem likely to be arrived at. 
The silk trade is said to be in a bad way, and the fault is 
laid on the French treaty. It was shown a year or two 
since, that fifty per cent, of hemp was worked up into 
English silk. May not this too have had something to do 
with the decline ? It was proved, in the " Lancet," after a 
series of elaborate investigations, that the smaller retail 
trade throughout the country was soaked with falsehood 
through and through. Scarcely one article was sold in 
the shops frequented by the poor, which was really the 
thing which it pretended to be. Last year there was an 
outcry about adulteration and false weights and measures ; 
attention was called to the subject in the House of Com- 
mons by Lord Eustice Cecil ; and perhaps, of all the 
moral symptoms of the age, the most significant is the 
answer which was given on that occasion by the President 
of the Board of Trade. The poor were and are the chief 
sufferers by fraud of this kind. Mr. Bright has risen to 
distinction as the poor man's friend; and those and the 
analogous complaints, with the general approbation of the 
great Liberal party, he treated with impatient ridicule. 
He spoke of adulteration as a natural consequence of 
competition. He resisted inquiry. " Adulteration," he 
said, " arises from the very great, and perhaps inevitable, 
competition in business, and to a large extent it is pro- 
moted by the ignorance of customers." He looked for a 
remedy in education, which would enable the poor to take 
care of themselves. The Home Secretary might as well 
have said that burglary was an inevitable consequence of 
the institution of property, that it was promoted by the 
weakness and cowardice of householders, and that he 
hoped it would be checked by a general possession of 
revolvers and increasing skill in the use of them. If tlie 
Liberal party will not admit the parallel, it is because they 
have lost the power of regarding swindling as a crime. 
11 



102 England and her Colonies. 

If I buy what jjrofesses to be a silk umbrella, and I find 
myself in jDOSsession of an umbrella which is two parts 
hemp, I am as much robbed as if a thief had picked my 
pocket. I am told that I must take care of myself; that 
it is not the business of government to save me from 
making a bad bargain. What is the business of govern- 
ment ? If caveat emptor is to be the rule, then why not 
caveat viator ? Why the exjjense of maintaining a police ? 
Many fine qualities are developed in men — courage, pru- 
dence, readiness, presence of mind, dexterity, and fore- 
thought — if they are left to defend for themselves their 
persons and their purses. Mr. Bright's rej^ly to Lord 
Eustice Cecil will not have tended to remove the mis- 
givings with which foreign purchasers are watching the 
symptoms of English commercial morality. 

Once more ; do we see our way so clearly through the 
growing perils from the trades' unions ? We are told on all 
sides that English manufacturers cannot hold their ground 
against foreign comj)etitors if the unions are to dictate the 
wages at which the artisans are to work. Our monojDoly 
of trade depends on our powers to undersell the foreigner 
in his own market ; a very slight margin makes the differ- 
ence. If the dictation of the unions is allowed to destroy 
that margin by insisting on an advance with the revival of 
demand, the manufacturer's profits are eaten up. His oc- 
cupation passes from him to countries where men and mas- 
ters can work together on terms more satisfactory to both 
of them. Has the solution of the problem been found so 
easy ? Has the faintest ray of light as yet been thrown 
upon it? The unions and the master employers are in a 
state of war, either open or at best suspended ; and war is 
the most wasteful and ruinous of all means by which hu- 
man differences can be adjusted. Every strike is a battle 
— a battle which determines nothing — in which there is 
no glory to be gained and no victory to be won which does 
not widen the breach more irreparably, while the destruc- 



England and her Colonies. 163 

tion of property and the resulting ruin and devastation are 
immediate and incalculable. Where is there a sign that 
labor and capital are beginning to see their way to a recon- 
ciliation ? Political economy is powerless ; and the states- 
man who relies for the stability and j)rogress of England on 
an indefinite expansion of trade, must either possess an in- 
sight marvelously deeper than that of common mortals, or 
must have a faith in economic principles in which, for our 
part, we are unable to share. 

But let us grant his conclusions. Suppose these difficul- 
ties overcome ; suppose Manchester, Liverpool, and Glas- 
gow swollen till they have each a million inhabitants ; sup- 
pose Lancashire a universal workshop, — a hundred thou- 
sand chimneys, the church spires of the commercial creed, 
vomiting their smoke into the new black heaven spread 
above them ; Lancashire calico and Yorkshire woolen cloth- 
ing every bare back in Asia ; the knives and forks of Eu- 
rope supphed from Sheffield ; and Staffiardshire furnishing 
iron for the railways of four continents. Let Sir Samuel 
Baker convert the interior of Africa into an enormous cot- 
ton-field, and the Nile become a highway, through which 
five million bales shall annually make their way into the 
Mersey. Let London expand to twice its present unwieldy 
size, its mendicancy and misery be absorbed, and the ware- 
houses on the Thames become the emporium in which the 
produce of the world is absorbed and again dispersed 
among mankind. Let the most sanguine dream of the most 
enthusiastic political economist be realized. Let us imag- 
ine our people so enlightened by education as to understand 
and act upon the policy of honesty ; harmony be established 
between employers and employed on an enlightened recog- 
nition of their mutual interests ; adulteration be thought as 
wicked as adultery, and the English brand on steel and cal- 
ico once more accepted as a passport for excellence. Let us 
make an effort of imagination, and concede that all this may 
be — well, and wliat then ? 



1^)4 England and her Colonies. 

For a certain class of people, — for the great merchants, 
great bankers, great shopkeej^ers, great manufacturers, 
whose business is to make money, whose whole thoughts 
are set on making money and enjoying the luxuries which 
money can command, — no doubt it would be a very line 
world. Those who are now rich would grow richer ; wealth 
in the modern sense of it would be enormously increased ; 
suburban palaces would multiply, and conservatories and 
gardens, and further oif the parks and pheasant preserves. 
Land would continue to rise in value, and become more and 
more the privilege of those who could aftbrd the luxury of 
owning it. From these classes we hear already a protest 
against emigration. Keep our people at home, they say, 
we shall want them when trade revives. There may be no 
work for them at present. Their wives and little ones may 
be starving with cold and hunger. They may be roaming 
the streets in vagrancy, crowding the casual wards, or be- 
sieging the doors of the poor-houses ; but still keep them, — 
all will be well by and by. Meantime let the poor-rate rise ; 
let the small householder in Whitechapel, himself strug- 
gling manfully for independence on the verge of beggary, 
pay six shillings in the pound to feed his neighbor who has 
sunk below the line. The tide will turn ; labor will soon 
be in demand again. Our profits will come back to us, and 
the Whitechapel householder may console himself with the 
certainty that his six shillings will sink again to three. 

But these classes, powerful though they may be, and in 
Parliament a great deal too powerful, are not the people of 
England ; they are not a twentieth, they are not a hundreth 
part of it ; and what sort of future is it to which under the 
present hypothesis the ninety-nine are to look forward ? 
The greatness of a nation depends upon the men whom it 
can breed and rear. The prosperity of it depends upon its 
strength, and if men are sacrificed to money, the money will 
not be long in following them. How is the further develop- 
ment of England along the road on which it has been trav- 



Erigland and her Colonies. 165 

elling at such a rate for the last twenty years likely to af- 
fect the great mass of the inhabitants of this island ? We 
have conquered our present position because the English are 
a race of unusual vigor both of body and mind, — industri- 
ous, energetic, ingenious, capable of great muscular exer- 
tion, and remarkable along with it for equally great personal 
courage. If we are to jDreserve our place we must preserve 
the qualities which won it. Without them all the gold in 
the planet will not save us. Gold will remain only with 
those who are strong enough to hold it ; and unless these 
qualities depend on conditions which cannot be calculated, 
and which therefore need not be considered, the statesman 
who attends only to what he calls the production of wealth, 
forgets the most important half of the problem which he has 
to solve. 

Under the conditions which I have supposed, England 
would become, still more than it is at present, a country of 
enormous cities. The industry on which its prosperity is to 
depend can only be carried on where large masses of peo- 
ple are congregated together, and the tendency already vis- 
ible towards a diminution of the agricultural population 
would become increasingly active. Large estates are fast 
devouring small estates ; large farms, small farms ; and this 
process will continue. Every economist knows that it must 
be so. Machinery will supersede human hands. Cattle 
breeding, as causing less expenditure in wages, will drive out 
tillage. A single herdsman or a single engineer will take 
the place of ten or twenty of the old farm laborers. Land 
will rise in value. Such laborers as remain may be better 
paid. Such as are forced into the towns may earn five shil- 
lings where they now earn three ; but as a class the village 
populations will dwindle away. Even now, while the in- 
crease has been so great elsewhere, their number remains 
stationary. The causes now at work will be more and more 
operative. The people of England will be a town-bred peo- 
ple. The country will be the luxury of the rich. 



166 England and her Colonies, 

Now it is against all experience that any nation can long 
remain great which does not possess, or having once pos- 
sessed has lost, a hardy and abundant peasantry. Athens 
lost her dependencies, and in two generations the sun of 
Athens had set. The armies which made the strength of 
the Roman republic were composed of the small freeholders 
of Latium and afterwards of Italy. When Rome became 
an empire, the freeholder disappeared ; the great families 
bought up the soil and cultivated it with slaves, and the 
decline and fall followed by inevitable consequence. Tyre, 
Carthage, or if these antiquated precedents are to pass for 
nothing, Venice, Genoa, Florence, and afterwards the Low 
Countries, had their periods of commercial splendor. But 
their greatness was founded on sand. They had wealth, 
but they had no rank and file of country -bred men to fall 
back upon, and they sunk as they had risen. In the Amer- 
ican civil war the enthusiastic clerks and shop-boys from 
the Eastern cities were blown in pieces by the Virginian 
riflemen. Had there been no Western farmers to fight the 
South with men of their own sort, and better than them- 
selves, the star banner of the Confederacy would still be fly- 
ing over Richmond. The life of cities brings with it cer- 
tain physical consequences, for which no antidote and no 
j)reventive has yet been discovered. When vast numbers 
of people are crowded together, the air they breathe be- 
comes impure, the water polluted. The hours of work are 
unhealthy, occupation passed largely within doors thins the 
blood and wastes the muscles and creates a craving for drink, 
which reacts again as poison. The town child rarely sees 
the sunshine ; and light, it is well known, is one of the chief 
feeders of life. What is worse, he rarely or never tastes 
fresh milk or butter,^ or even bread which is unbewitched. 
The rate of mortality may not be perceptibly affected. The 
Bolton operative may live as long as his brother on the 
moors, but though bred originally perhaps in the same 
country home, he has not the same bone and stature, and the 



England and her Colonies. 167 

contrast between the children and grandchildren will be in- 
creasingly marked. Any one who cares to observe a gath- 
ering of operatives in Leeds or Bradford, and will walk af- 
terwards through Beverley on a market day, will see two 
groui3s which, comparing man to man, are like pigmies be- 
side giants. A hundred laborers from the wolds would be 
a match for a thousand weavers. The tailor confined to his 
shop-board has been called the ninth part of a man. There 
is nothing special in the tailor's work so to fractionize him 
beyond other indoor trades. We shall be breeding up a 
nation of tailors. In the great engine factories and iron 
works we see large sinewy men, but they are invariably 
country born. Their children dwindle as if a blight was on 
them. Artisans and operatives of all sorts who work in con- 
finement are so exhausted at the end of their day's labor 
that the temptations of the drink-shop are irresistible. As 
towns grow, drunkenness grows, and with drunkenness 
comes diminished stamina and physical decrej)itude. 

The sums spent by English town operatives on gin and 
beer, more than equals a second revenue ; while every 
shilling swilled away is so much taken from the food and 
clothes of their children. In the country villages, habits 
of life are different ; the landlord can use his authority to 
remove or diminish temptation ; but restraint in towns is 
with general consent regarded as impossible ; no parish 
board, no government dares interfere ; education, religion, 
philanthropic persuasion, are equally powerless, and the 
rate of consumption of intoxicating liquors (usually at 
present poisonous as well as intoxicating), in proportion to 
the population, increases every year. The conditions under 
which the town operative works all encourage a reckless 
tendency ; many occupations are themselves deadly, and 
the cry is for a short life and a merry one. Employment 
at best is fitful. The factory hand is generally perhaps 
earning overflowing wages. Then bad times come, and he 
works but three days a week, or four, or noae. He is im- 



168 England and her Colonies. 

provident in his abundance. His hand to month existence 
is unfavorable to the formation of habits of prudence. As 
a rule, he saves little, and the little is soon gone. The 
furniture goes to the pawnshop, and then comes want and 
starvation ; and any shilling that he can earn he carries to 
the gin-palace, where he can forget the hunger-stricken 
faces which he has left at home. His own fault, it is said ; 
but when particular tendencies show themselves uniformly 
in particular bodies of men, there must be causes at work 
to account for them. And besides drunkenness there are 
other vices and other diseases, not peculiar to towns, per- 
haps, but especially virulent and deadly there, which tend 
equally to corrupt the blood and weaken the constitution. 
Every great city becomes a moral cess-pool, into which 
profligacy has a tendency to drain, and where, being shut 
out from light, it is amenable to no control. The edu- 
cated and the wealthy live apart in their own streets and 
squares. The upper half of the world knows nothing of 
the under, nor the under of the upper. In the village the 
squire and parson at least know what is going on, and can 
use authority over the worst excesses ; where men are 
gathered in multitudes it is impossible. Disease and de- 
moralization go hand in hand, undermining and debilitating 
the physical strength, and over-civilization creates in its 
own breast the sores which will one day kill it. 

I have spoken of the effect of modern city life upon the 
body ; it would be easy were it likely to be of any service 
to say more of its effect upon the mind. In those past 
generations, when the English character was moulding 
itself, there was a virtue specially recognized among us, 
called content. We were a people who lived much by 
custom. As the father lived, the son lived ; he was proud 
of maintaining the traditions and habits of his family, and 
he remained in the same position of life without aspiring 
to rise from it. The same family continued in the same 
farm, neither adding to its acres nor diminishing them. 



England and her Colonies. 169 

Shop, factory, and warehouse were handed down with the 
same stationary character, yielding constant but moderate 
profits, to which the habits of life were adjusted. Satisfied 
with the share of this world's goods which his situation in 
life assigned to him, the tradesman aspired no higher, 
endeavoring only, in the words of the antiquated catechism, 
" to do his duty in that state of life to which it had pleased 
God to call him." Throughout the country there was an 
ordered, moderate, and temperate contentedness, energetic 
— but energetic more in doing well the work that was to 
be done than in " bettering " this or that person's condition 
in life. Something of this lingers yet among old-fashioned 
people in holes and corners of England; but it is alien 
both to the principles and the temper of the new era. To 
23ush on, to climb vigorously on the slippery steps of the 
social ladder, to raise ourselves one step or more out of the 
rank of life in which we were born, is now converted into a 
duty. It is the condition under which each of us plays his 
proper part as a factor in the general progress. The more 
commercial prosperity increases, the more universal such a 
habit of mind becomes. It is the first element of success 
in the course to which the country seems to be committing 
itself There must be no rest, no standing still, no pausing 
to take breath. The stability of such a sj^stem depends, 
like the boy's top, on the rapidity of its speed. To stop is 
to fall ; to slacken speed is to be overtaken by our rivals. 
We are whirled along in the breathless race of competition. 
The motion becomes faster and faster, and the man must be 
unlike anything which the experience of humanity gives us 
a right to hope for, who can either retain his conscience, or 
any one of the nobler qualities, in so wild a career. 

Is such a state of things a wholesome one ? Is it politi- 
cally safe ? Is it morally tolerable ? Is it not certain for 
one thing that a competition, of which profit is the first 
object, will breed dishonesty as carrion breeds worms ? 
Much of it is certain to continue, unless England collapses 



170 England and her Colonies. 

altogether. Nothing but absolute failure will check the 
growth of manufactures among us ; but is it absolutely 
necessary that the whole weight of the commonwealth 
should be thrown upon trade ? Is there no second or 
steadier basis to be found anywhere ? I cannot myself con- 
template the inclosure of the English nation within these 
islands, with an increasing manufacturing population, and 
not feel a misgiving that we shall fail in securing even those 
material objects to which our other prospects are to be 
sacrificed. We shall not be contented to sink into a second 
place. A growth of population we must have to keep 
pace with the nations round us ; and unless we can breed 
up part of our people in occupations more healthy for 
mind or body than can be found in the coal-pit and work- 
shop — unless we preserve in sufficient numbers the purity 
and vigor of our race — if we trust entirely to the expan- 
sion of towns, we are sacrificing to immediate and mean 
temptations the stability of the empire which we have 
inherited. 

If we are to take hostages of the future, we require an 
agricultural population independent of and beside the 
towns. We have no longer land enough in England com- 
mensurate with our present dimensions, and the land that 
we have lies under conditions which only a revolution can 
again divide among small cultivators. A convulsion which 
would break up the great estates would destroy the entire 
constitution. It is not the law of the land, it is not custom, 
it is not the pride of family, which causes the agglomeration. 
It is an economic law, which legislation can no more alter 
than it can alter the law of g'ravity. 

The problem is a perfectly simple one. Other nations, 
once less powerful or not more powerfol than ourselves, 
are growing in strength and numbers, and we too must 
grow if we intend to remain on a level with ttem. Here 
at home we have no room to grow except by the expansion 
of towns which are already overgrown, which we know not 



England and her Colonies. 171 

certainly that we can expand. If we succeed, it can be 
only under conditions unfavorable and probably destructive 
to the physical constitution of our j^eople, and oui' greatness 
will be held by a tenure which in the nature of things must 
become more and more precarious. 

Is there then no alternative ? Once absolutely our own, 
and still easily within our reach, are our eastern and 
western colonies, containing all and more than all that we 
require. We want land on which to plant English families 
where they may thrive and multiply without ceasing to be 
Englishmen. The land lies ready to our hand. The colo- 
nies contain virgin soil sufficient to employ and feed five 
times as many people as are now crowded into Great 
Britain and Ireland. Nothing is needed but arms to culti- 
vate it, while here, among ourselves, are millions of able- 
bodied men unwillingly idle, clamoring for work, with their 
fiimilies starving on their hands. What more simple than 
to bring the men and the land together? Everything 
which we could most desire, exactly meeting what is most 
required, is thrust into our hands, and this particular 
moment is chosen to tell the colonies that we do not want 
them, and they may go. The land, we are told impatiently, 
is no longer ours. A few years ago it was ours, . but to 
save the Colonial Office trouble we made it over to the 
local governments, and now we have no more rights over it 
than we have over the prairies of Texas. If it were so, the 
more shame to politicians who let drop so precious an 
inheritance. But the colonies, it seems, set more value 
than we do on the prosperity of the empire. They care 
little for the profit or pleasure of individual capitalists. 
They see their way more clearly perhaps because their 
judgment is not embarrassed by considerations of the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer's budget. Conscious that 
their relations with us cannot continue on their present 
footing, their ambition is to draw closer to us, to be ab- 
sorbed in a united empire. From them we have no diffi- 



172 Englayid and her Colonies. 

culty to fear, for in consenting they have everything to 
gain. They a:e proud, of being English subjects. Every 
able-bodied workman who lands on their shores is so much 
added to their wealth as well as ours. If we do not attempt 
to thrust paupers and criminals on them, but send laborers 
and their families adequately provided, they will absorb our 
people by millions, while in desiring to remain attached to 
England they are consulting England's real interests as 
entirely as their own. Each husband and wife as they es- 
tablish themselves will be a fresh root for the old tree, 
struck into a new soil. 

And yet statesmen say it is impossible. "Wealthy Eng- 
land cannot do what wretched Ireland was able to do, and 
transport those whom she can no longer feed to a place 
where they can feed themselves, and to herself be a support 
instead of a burden. Impossible ! The legislative union 
with Scotland was found possible, and there were rather 
greater difficulties in the way of that than those which 
obstruct a union with the colonies. The problem then was 
to reconcile two nations which were hereditary enemies. 
The problem now is but to reunite the scattered fragments 
of the same nation, and bridge over the distance which 
divides them from us. Distance frightens us ; but steam 
and the telegraph have abolished distance. A Cornish 
miner and his family can now emigrate to the Burra Burra 
with greater ease, and at a less expense, than a hundred 
years ago they would make their way to a Lancashire coal- 
pit. St. George's Channel at the time of the union with 
Ireland was harder to cross in stormy winter weather than 
the Atlantic is at present. Before the Panama railway 
was opened, and the road to California lay round Cape 
Horn, London was as near it as New York ; yet California 
was no less a State in the American Union. England 
would not hold the place which now belongs to her had 
there not been statesmen belonging to her capable of harder 
achievements than reattaching the colonies. It is not true 



England and her Colonies. 173 

that we are deterred by the difficulties. If there was the 
will to do it, if there was any real sense that the interests 
of the country required it, the difficulties would be found as 
unsubstantial as the proverbial lions which obstruct the 
path of the incapable. We are asked contemptuously how 
it is to be done. We ask in return, do you wish it to be 
done ? for if you do your other question will answer itself. 
Neither the terms of the federation, the nature of the Im- 
perial council, the functions of the local legislatures, the 
present debts of the colonies, or the apportionment of taxa- 
tion, would be found problems hard of solution, if the 
apostles of laissez-faire could believe for once that it was 
not the last word of political science. 

For emigration, the first step is the only hard one ; to do 
for England what Ireland did for itself, and at once spread 
over the colonies the surplus population for whom we can 
find no employment at home. Once established on a great 
scale emigration supports itself. Every Irishman who now 
goes to the United States, has his expenses paid by those 
who went before him, and who find it their own interest, 
where there is such large elbow-room, to attract the labor 
of their friends. It would cost us money — but so do wars ; 
and for a great object we do not shrink from fighting. 
Let it be once established that an Enghshman emigrating 
to Canada, or the Cape, or Australia, or New Zealand, did 
not forfeit his nationality, that he was still on English soil 
as much as if he was in Devonshire or Yorksliirc, and 
would remain an Englishman while the English empire 
lasted ; and if we spent a quarter of the sums which were 
sunk in the morasses at Balaclava in sending out and estab- 
lishing two millions of our people in those colonies, it would 
contribute more to the essential strength of the country 
than all the wars in which we have been entangled from 
Agincourt to AYaterloo. No further subsidies would be 
needed to feed the stream. Once settled they would mul- 
tiply and draw their relations after them, and at great 



174 England and her Colonies. 

stations round the globe there would grow up, under condi- 
tions the most favorable which the human constitution can 
desire, fresh nations of Englishmen. So strongly placed, 
and with numbers growing in geometrical proportion, they 
would be at once feeding-places of our population, and self- 
supporting imperial garrisons themselves unconquerable. 
With our roots thus struck so deeply into the earth, it is 
hard to see what dangers, internal or external, we should 
have cause to fear, or what impediments could then check 
the indefinite and magnificent expansion of the English 
Empire. 

There is one more element in the question which must 
not be passed over. These are not days for small States : 
the natural barriers are broken down which once divided 
kino;dom from kingdom ; and with the interests of nations 
so much intertwined as they are now becoming, every one 
feels the benefit of belonging to a first-rate Power. The 
German States gravitate into Prussia, the Italians into 
Piedmont. While we are talking of dismembering our 
empire, the Americans have made enormous sacrifices to 
preserve the unity of theirs. If we throw off the colonies, 
it is at least possible that they may apply for admittance 
into the American Union ; -^ and it is equally possible that 
the Americans may not refuse them. Canada they already 
calculate on as a certainty. Why may not the Cape and 
Australia and New Zealand follow ? An American citizen 
is a more considerable person in the world than a mem- 
ber of the independent republic of Cape Town or Natal ; 
and should the colonists take this view of their interests, 
and should America encourage them, what kind of future 
would then lie before England ? Our very existence as a 
nation would soon depend upon the clemency of the Power 

1 The mention of this possibility has been received with ridicule in 
Australia. So much the better; but it is none the less certain that the 
English speaking peoples will drift into a union of some kind. If they do 
not choose England as their centre, they will eventually choose America, 
whatever they niav think about it at present. 



England and her Colonies. 175 

which would have finally taken the lead from us among 
the English-speakmg races. If Australia and the Caj^e 
were American we could not hold India, except at the 
Americans' pleasure. Our commerce would be equally 
at their mercy, and the best prospect for us would be to 
be one day swept up into the train of the same grand con- 
federacy. 

It is easy to say that we need not quarrel with America, 
that her interests are ours, that we mean to cultivate 
friendly relations with her, with such other commonplaces. 
From the day that it is confessed that we are no longer 
equal to a conflict with her, if cause of rupture should un- 
happily arise, our sun has set : we shall sink as Holland 
has sunk into a community of harmless traders, and leave 
to others the place which once we held and have lost the 
energy to keep. 

Our people generally are too much occuj^ied with their 
own concerns to think of matters which do not personally 
press upon them, and our relations with the colonies have 
drifted into a condition which it is agreed on all sides 
must now be modified in one direction or another. States- 
men who ought to have looked forward have allowed the 
question to take its own course, till they have brought 
separation to the edge of consummation. The breaking 
ujD of our empire, however, cannot be completed till the 
country has had an opportunity of declaring its pleasure ; 
and if the nation is once roused into attention, pricked it 
may be into serious thought by the inexorable encroach- 
ments of the poor-rate, it may yet speak in tones to which 
the deafest political doctrinaire will be compelled to listen. 
A very short time will probably see some decision taken 
for good or evil. Representatives from the colonies are 
said to be coming here in the spring,' to learn what they 

1 Unfortunately they were not allowed to come. Lord Granville pushed 
Beparation one step nearer by throwing cold water on the proposal. He 
said that he did not desire the colonies to leave us, but he took pains to ex- 



17G EtKjland and her Colonies. 

an; to look to, and {\\v. resolutions then arrived at will he 
of iiinueasurahle monicnt to their I'ordiiies and to ours. It 
in Jio party question ; all raidvs, all elassos arc equally in- 
terested, inanufaetui'ers in the (creation of new markets, 
land-owners in the (!X[)ansion of soil which will remove, 
:ind which prohiihly alone can remove, the diseontent with 
their incrcMsini;- ni()no|»oly at honu^ JMost of all is it the 
conc(!rn of the working men. Let broad bridges be es- 
tablished into other Englands, and they may exehange 
brightc^r homes and brighter [)ros[)ects for their children 
for a lite which is no life in tin; ibul alh'ys of London and 
(liasgow; whih^ by relieving the i)ressure at home they 
may end the war between masters and men, and solvo 
the problems of labor which trades unions can only em- 
bitter. 

That emigration alone can give them permanent relief 
the working men themselves will ultimately find out. We 
cannot save the millions of Irish. That portion of her 
volumes tlu; sibyl has burnt alieady. Are we to wait till 
oni- own ai"tis:ins, discovering thci hopelessness of the 
struggle wilh capital, and e\as[>erated by hunger and 
neglect, lollow in millions also the Irish example, carry 
their industry where the Jrisli have carried theirs, and 
with them the hearts and hopes and sym2)athies of three 
qn;irt-ers of tlu^ Knglish nation ? 

Klc'clcif si lUMiuiM) siii»on)s, Aclioroiita movcbo! «> 

If Mr. (iladstone and Lord (Jranville arc indifferent, we 
a|)peal to IMr. Disraeli. This is one of those Inq)erial 
(•oncerns which the aristocracy, lifted by fortune above the 
ti inptiit/ions and necessities of trade, can best afford to 
weigh with im})artiality. They too may find motives of 
prudcuice to induce them to turn it over in their minds. 
'J'h(M-e are those who thiidv that if the colonies are cut oil', 

liiliil liis iii(li(Vcr(MU'i> whotlirr llioy wont or slaved; and it is lliis iiidillVr- 
(MU'c, so oslciitatiously displayod, wlut.'l» is tlu' arlivc (.'ausc ol' aliruatiou. 



England and her Colonies. 177 

that if the Englisli peoj)lc understixud that they are dosed 
in once for all within the limits of their own island, that 
they have no prospects elsewhere unless they abandon their 
country and pass under another flag, the years that the 
present land laws will last unmodified may be counted on 
the finijers of a sin<xle hand. 

12 



A FORTNIGHT IN KERRY. 



We have heard much of the wrongs of Ireland, the mis- 
eries of Ireland, the crimes of Ireland ; every cloud has its 
sunny side ; and, when all is said, Ireland is still the most 
beautiful island in the world, and the Irish themselves, 
though their temperament is ill-matched with ours, are still 
among the most interesting of peoples. If the old type of 
character remains in many of its most unmanageable fea- 
tures, they are no longer the Paddies of our childhood. 
Wave after wave of convulsion has been rolling over the 
race for hundreds of years past, distinct eras of social or- 
ganization, with special elements of good and evil in them. 
The last of these waves, the great famine of 1816, swept 
over the country like a destroying torrent, carrying away 
millions of its peasantry, clearing off the out-at-elbows duel- 
fighting squireens, and paralyzing if it has not extinguished 
the humor and the fun which made the boy that carried 
your game-bag, or fishing-basket the most charming of com- 
panions. 

The farmer, however seemingly prosperous, carries sad- 
ness in his eyes and care on his forehead. If he is thriving 
himself, his family is broken up ; his sons or his brothers 
are beyond the Atlantic, and his heart was broken in part- 
ing with them. The evictions which followed the potato 
failure have left their marks in a feeling of injustice, of 
which Fenianism is the fruit and the expression. 

This too, however, is passing away or will pass when the 
Administration recovers courage to combine firmness with 
justice ; and meanwhile, in spite of outrages and assassina- 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 179 

tions, every one who has watched the Irish character during 
the last quarter of a century must have felt that it is fast 
altering, and altering immensely for the better. " We are 
all changed," said one of the people to me. " You know 
yourself the landlords are changed, and we are changed, 
too, if you would only believe it. We have all learnt our 
lesson together." Where the beneficial influences have 
been the strongest, that is to say, where there has been no 
cruelty and the tenants have been kindly used, there is 
growing up a life in all parts of Ireland, with more subdued 
grace about it, more human in its best features, than is to be 
found in any other part of these islands. I had an opj)or- 
tunity of seeing something of this last summer, under its 
most favorable aspect. A friend who had taken a place for 
a season or two in the Kerry mountains, invited me to 
spend a fortnight with him ; and careless of the warnings 
of acquaintances who feared that I should not come back 
alive, I took my place in the Holyhead mail. It was the 
second week in August. We left London at night. In the 
morning we were in Kingston Harbor, and a few hours 
later I was deposited at the railway station at ICQlarney. 
Derreen — so I will call the house to which I was bound — 
was still nearly forty miles distant. The train was late, 
but the evening promised well. I put myself in the hands 
of Spillane, the most accomplished of bugle-jDlayers, and the 
politest of hotel managers ; and, after a hasty dinner, I was 
soon rattling along beside the lake in a jaunting car, with a 
promise of being at my journey's end, if not before dark, 
yet at no unreasonable hour. An exquisite drive of three 
hours brought me to Kenmare, a town at the head of one 
of the long fiords running up from the Atlantic, which read- 
ers of Macaulay will remember as the scene of a brilliant 
defense made by a small body of Protestant settlers against 
the Irish insurgents. It was not my first visit to the place. 
Thirty years before I had passed through it from GlengarifF 
in a long vacation holiday. The Lansdowne Ai*ms was 



180 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

still in its old place ; but the generation which frequented 
it had i^assed away. The " boy " who was then driving me 
called my attention, as I remember, to a group of gen- 
tlemen at the door. There were two O'Connells, cousins 
of the Liberator, at that time in the zenith of his glory. 
There was Morty O' Sullivan, and another whose name I 
forget. The point about them was that each had killed his 
man in a duel, and Morty had killed two. He was one of the 
old fire-eaters, a spare, well-dressed, refined-looking person, 
a descendant of the old chiefs of Berehaven, ruling the 
wreck of his inheritance with an authority scarcely less 
despotic as far as it extended ; like his ancestors, in perpet- 
ual feud ^ith his neighbors, and settling his quarrels with 
them in the field or in the law courts. He had lived — I 
should say " reigned," for that is still the word — at Der- 
reen itself He had screwed his tenants, drunk whiskey 
enough daily for ten degenerate mortals, such as now we 
know them, turned his house into a pig-sty, and been loved 
and honored throughout the valley. Morty tlie Good he 
was called, the king of the golden age of Kerry, and un- 
happy only in the incapacity of one of his sons, whom he 
never could teach to handle a pistol like a gentleman. The 
young O' Sullivan took kindly to the ways of the family ; 
quarreled with a companion before he was out of his teens, 
and went out to settle the dispute in legitimate fashion. 
But Morty augured ill for the result. He ordered the 
wake beforehand, and was disappointed, it was to be hoped 
agreeably, when the object of his care was brought home 
only shot through the foot. 

Morty had been now long in his grave. Litigation had 
crippled his fortune, and the famine finished it. His boys 
were scattered over the world, and his place knew him no 
more. Morty was gone, and the fighting squirearchy to 
which he belonged was gone also, extinct like the dodo ; 
and in the place of tlie group which I remembered, one or 
two harmless clerks belonging to the town stores were 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 181 

lounging at the porch in the summer gloaming, comparing 
salmon-flies, or talking about the cricket club which had 
been set on foot there by some neighboring gentlemen. 

Besides these were a couple of smart-looking boatmjii, 
one of whom, after ascertaining who I was, informed me 
that my friend had sent up his yacht, a smart cutter of 
twenty tons, and that if I preferred a sail to a longer drive 
they were ready to take charge of me. The wind was from 
the east, light but fxir, and they believed that it would not 
drop till midnight. But we had still seventeen miles to go. 
I inquired what would happen if it did drop, and as the an- 
swer was vague, I determined to stick to my car, and to 
lose no time, for it was growing dark. My driver declined 
a change of horses. The small, well-bred Irish car horse 
does his forty miles a day through the season with only an 
occasional rest, and seems little the worse for it. Away 
we went again after a halt of three quarters of an hour, and 
three minutes brought us to the suspension bridge crossing 
the head of the fiord, one end of which rests on the penin- 
sula where the Protestants were besieged. That, too, with 
its traditions was a thing of the past, and might have fur- 
nished a text at any other time for its appropriate medi- 
tations. But the scene was too beautiful for moralizing. 
The pink evening light had faded off the mountains, but 
the tints which lingered in the western sky were reflected 
faintly on the glimmering water. The cutter was clearing 
out of the harbor with her big gaff topsail set, and her bal- 
loon jib, and as she slid away the men tauntingly hailed my 
driver, and promised to tell my friends that we were coming. 

The mare received an intimation that she must put her 
best foot forward ; we struck off to the right on crossing 
the bridge, and entered a long fir wood which skirts the 
river, catching glimpses at intervals of the shining water 
through gaps in the trees. 

By-and-by we emerged into open ground. The road 
was level, following the line of the bay for eight or nine 



182 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

miles, and crossing the mouths of valley after valley where 
the streams which drain the hills run into the sea. It was 
now dark, so far as a summer night is ever dark. The 
cutter still kept ahead of us, shimmering ghost-like in the 
uncertain light. Sometimes we seemed to be gaining on 
her — then, as a fresh puff of air overtook her, she stole 
away. At last our ways parted ; she held on towards a 
headland far down the bay which she was obliged to round 
before she could enter Kilmakilloge, the harbor on which 
Derreen is situated. The road, to avoid a long circuit, 
strikes upwards over a pass in the hills, to descend on the 
other side into the head of the valley. 

The ascent now became tedious ; we had lost the cutter, 
and were climbing the broken side of an utterly barren 
mountain. The distant view was hidden by the darkness, 
and the forms immediately round us had nothing striking 
about them, beyond a solitary peak which shot up black 
and gloomy-looking into the sky. Two miles of walking 
ground made me impatient to be at my journey's end, and 
I was unprepared for the scene which was immediately 
about to break upon me. 

We reached the crest at last — rounded a corner of rock, 
and were at once in another world. The moon had risen, 
though concealed by the hill which we had been ascend- 
ing, and burst upon us broad and full as we turned to de- 
scend. Below us was a long deep valley, losing itself to 
the left in the shadows in the Glengariff mountains ; open- 
ing to the right in the harbor of Kilmakilloge, which lay 
out like a looking-glass in the midst of the hills in which 
it is land-locked. Across, immediately before us, was a 
gorge, black and narrow, the sides of which, in the imper- 
fect light, appeared to fall precipitously two thousand feet. 
Beyond, at the head of the harbor, was a second group of 
mountains, shaped in still wilder variety, while the bottom 
of the valley was traversed by a river divided into long 
shining pools suggestive of salmon and sea-trout, and 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 183 

broken at intervals with cascades, the roar of which swayed 
up fitfully in the night air. 

These glens and precipices had been the retreat of the 
last Earl of Desmond in the closing summer of his life. 
The long peninsula shut in between the fiords of Bantry 
and Kenmare was then covered from end to end with for- 
est, inaccessible excejDt by water, or j^enetrated by a few 
scarce discoverable horse-tracks ; inhabited by wolves, and 
by men who were almost as wild, and were human only in 
the ineffable fidelity with which they concealed and shielded 
their hunted chief The enormous trees which lie in the 
bogs, or the trunks which break on all sides out of the 
ground, prove that once these hills were as thickly wooded 
as those which have escaped the spoiler, and in their sum- 
mer livery delight the tourist at Killarney. Now, the 
single fault of the landscape is its desolation. Sir William 
Petty, who obtained the assignment of the principality of 
Kerry on terms as easy as those on which the Colonial 
Office squandered millions of the best acres in Canada, 
considered the supply of fuel to be practically as inex- 
haustible as we now consider our coal measures. He' set 
up refining works on the shore of the harbor, and tin and 
copper ore was brought over there, till the last available 
stick had been cut down to smelt it. Nature still struggles 
to repair the ruin, and young oaks and birches sprout of 
themselves, year after year, out of the soil, but the cattle 
browse them off as they appear ; and the wolves being de- 
stroyed which once scared the sheep out of the covers, and 
gave them time to renew their natural waste, civilization 
itself continues the work of the destroyer, and dooms the 
district to perpetual barrenness. Of the forests of oak 
and arbutus and yew which once clothed the whole of 
Kerry, the woods at Killarney have alone escaped ; those 
and some few other scattered spots, which for some special 
reason were spared in the general havoc. 

At one of these, the " domain " as it is called of Derreen, 



184 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

I have by this time arrived. Two miles of descent bal- 
anced the climb on the other side. We are again in the 
midst of trees. Level meadows beside the river are dotted 
with sleeping cattle ; we have passed a farmhouse or two^ 
and now a chapel, handsome and new, at a meeting of cross 
roads. We turn into a gate ; a gravel drive leads us to 
where lights are shining behind overhanging branches. 
The harbor is close below us ; a four-oared boat is going 
out for a night's fishing ; the cutter is at this very moment 
picking up her moorings ; we have not beaten her, but we 
are not disgraced ourselves. In another minute we are in 
the broad walk which leads to the house. The night was 
hot, my friend's party were on the lawn ; some of them 
had been dining on board a yacht, the lights of which were 
visible as she lay at anchor, a mile from the windows. 
They had come on shore in the yacht's gig, and were 
standing about reluctant to go in-doors from the unusual 
loveliness of the evening. 

They proposed a stroll round the grounds, to which I 
was delighted to consent. The house stood in the middle 
of a lawn, shut in on all sides by woods, through which, 
however, openings had been cut in various places, letting 
in the view of the water. The original building, which 
had been the residence of Morty and his sons, was little 
more than a cottage. It had been enlarged by a straggling 
wing better suited to the habits of modern times. Morty, 
who had cared little for beauty, had let the trees grow close 
to the door. He might have shot woodcocks from his win- 
dow, and I dare say he did ; while the close cover had 
served to shelter and conceal his considerable operations 
in the smuggling line. This more practical aspect of 
things had been superseded by the sentimental, and by 
lopping and clearing, full justice had been done to the 
beauty — I may say, the splendor — of the situation. The 
harbor of Kilmakilloge forms a branch of the Kenmare 
River, from three to four miles deep, and pierced on both 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 185 

sides by long creeks, divided by wooded promontories. On 
the largest of these, some ninety acres in extent, the house 
had been placed. Two acres had been cleared to make a 
garden. Four or five more formed a field running down 
to the sea. The rest was as Nature made it, the primeval 
forest, untouched save for the laurels and rhododendrons 
which were scattered under the trees where the ground 
was dry enough to let them grow. Two rivers fell into 
the harbor at the upper end, one of them that along which 
I had just been driving ; the other, the larger, emerging out 
of a broad valley under a bridge, which, with the water 
behind, showed clear and distinct in the moonlight. All 
round us rose the wall of mountains, the broken outline 
being the more striking, because at night the surface details 
are lost and only the large forms are visible. The sky line 
on three sides was from two to six miles distant. On the 
fourth side, towards the mouth of the harbor, it was more 
remote ; but here, too, the rim of mountains continued to 
the eye unbroken. The ocean was shut off by the huge 
backbone of hills which stretches from Macgillicuddy's 
Reeks to the Atlantic. To all appearance Derreen was 
cut off from the world as effectually as the valley of Ras- 
selas ; and, but for the intrusion of the postman, made evi- 
dent by my friend's inquiries as to the last division and the 
white-bait dinner, but for the croquet wires which I stum- 
bled over on the lawn, we might have seemed divided as 
utterly from all connection with the world and its concerns. 
We wandered through the woods, and along the walks 
which followed the shore. The wind was gone : the last 
breath of it had brought the yacht to her moorings. The 
water was like a sheet of pale gold, lighted in the shadows 
by phosphorescent flashes where a seal was chasing a mul- 
let for his supper. Far off we heard the cries of the fish- 
ermen as they were laying out their mackerel nets ; a heron 
or two flew screaming out of some large trees beside the 
boat-house, resentful at the intrusion on their night's rest ; 



186 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

and from overhead came a rush of wings, and the long wild 
whistle of the curlew. 

One of the ladies observed that it was like a scene in a 
play. She was fond of theatres herself; she was a distin- 
guished artist in that line — or would have been had she 
been bred to the trade ; and her similes followed her line 
of thought. It sounded absurd, but I remembered having 
myself experienced once an exactly similar sensation. I 
was going up Channel in a steamer. It was precisely such 
another warm, breathless, moonlight summer night, save 
that there was a light mist over the water, which prevented 
us from seeing very clearly objects that were at any dis- 
tance from us. The watch on the forecastle called out, 
" A sail ahead ! " We shut off the steam, and passed slowly 
within a biscuit's throw of an enormous China clipper, 
with all her canvas set, and every sail drooping flat from 
the yards. We heard the officers talking on the quarter- 
deck. The ship's bell struck the hour as we went by. 
Why the recollections of the familiar sea moonlight of 
Drury Lane should have rushed over me at such a moment 
I know not, unless it be that those only who are rarely, 
gifted feel natural beauty with real intensity. With the 
rest of us our high sensations are at best partly artificial. 
We make an effort to realize emotions which we imagine 
that we ought to experience, and are theatrical ourselves in 
making it. 

A glance out of the window in the morning showed that 
I had not overrated the general charm of the situation. 
The colors were unlike those of any mountain scenery to 
which I was accustomed elsewhere. The temj^erature is 
many degrees higher than that of the Scotch Highlands. 
The Gulf Stream impinges full upon the mouths of its long 
bays. Every tide carries the flood of warm water forty 
miles inland, and the vegetation consequently is rarely or 
never checked by frost even two thousand feet above the 
sea-level. Thus the mountains have a greenness altogether 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 187 

peculiar, stretches of grass as rich as water-meadows reach- 
ing between the crags and precipices to the very summits. 
The rock, chiefly Old Red Sandstone, is purple. The 
heather, of which there are enormous masses, is in many 
places waist deep. 

The sky was cloudless, and catching the chance of per- 
forming my morning's ablutions in salt water, I slipped 
into the few indispensable garments, and hurried down to 
the front door. My host's youngest boy, a brown-cheeked 
creature of six, who was playing with the dogs on the 
steps, undertook to pilot me to the bathing-place, a move 
not wholly disinterested on his ]3art, as the banks on either 
side of the walks were covered with wild strawberries and 
whortleberries. Away we went through the woods again, 
among the gnarled and moss-clothed trunks of oaks hun- 
di-eds of years old, and between huge boulders draped with 
ferns and London pride, which here grows luxuriantly 
wild. The walk ended at a jutting promontory of rock, 
where steps had been cut, leading to the water at a soft 
spot where a dike of slate had pierced a fault in the sand- 
stone. The water itself was stainless as the Atlantic. I 
jumped in carefully, expecting to touch the bottom, yet I 
could scarcely reach it by diving. I tried to persuade my 
companion to take a swim upon my back, but he was too 
wary to be tempted. He was a philosopher, and was 
speculating on making a fortune out of the copper veins 
which were shining in the interstices of the slate. Our 
friend the seal, whom we had seen at supper, seemed dis- 
posed to join me. A shiny black head popped up from 
under the surface thirty yards off, and looked me over to 
see if I was one of his relations ; but after a careful scrutiny 
he disliked the looks of me, dropped under and disappeared. 
The seals once swarmed upon this coast under shelter of 
popular superstition. "The sowls of thim that were 
drowned at the flood " were supposed to be enchanted in 
their bodies, undergoing water purgatory. At times they 



188 A Fortnight in Kerry, 

were allowed to drop their skins, and play in human form 
upon the shore, and the mortal who was bold enough to 
steal the robe of some fish-maiden whom he could surprise, 
might win her and keep her for his bride. They are yield- 
ing slowly before what is called education and civilization, 
and the last of them will soon be a thing of history like the 
last wolf ; but the restriction upon firearms in Ireland still 
acts as a protection, and a few yet loiter about the quiet 
nooks where they find themselves unmolested. 

Before I was dressed we heard a sound of oars ; a boat 
came round the corner, rowed by the men belonging to the 
cutter. They had been out early to take up the fluke nets 
and overhaul the lobster pots, and were bringing in what 
they had .caught to the house. A dozen plaice, two or 
three pairs of large soles, and a turbot twelve pounds 
weight, made ujd rather more than an average night's haul, 
obtained by the rudest of methods. The nets are of fine 
twine with a large mesh. They are from fifty to a hun- 
dred fathoms long, five feet deep, and held perpendicularly 
on the sand at the bottom, by a line of leads, just sufficient 
to sink them, and a line of small corks to keep them in an 
upright position. In these the flat fish entangle themselves 
— such of them as are stupid enough to persevere in 
endeavoring to push through, and are without the strength, 
like the conger and dog-fish, to break the net, and tear a 
way for themselves. Huge rents showed v/here creatures 
of this kind had escaped capture ; but the holes are easily 
mended, and so many fish can be taken with so much ease, 
that the people do not care to improve on their traditionary 
ways. It is not for want of ingenuity or industry. The 
Pat of Kerry is either unlike his kindred in the rest of the 
island, or they are a calumniated race altogether. On 
Kilmakilloge he makes his own boats, he makes his own 
nets, he twists his own ropes and cables out of the fibre of 
the bog pine which he digs out of the peat. He wants but 
a market to change his skiff" into a trawler, and to establish 
a second Brixham at the splendid bay of Ballinskelligs. 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 189 

Half a dozen skate were lying on the bottom boards 
among the nobler fish, here used only to be cut up for 
bait ; these, and a monster called an angel shark, begotten 
long ago, it would appear, from some unlawful concubinage 
between a dog-fish and a ray. There were three enormous 
lobsters besides, better in my experience to look at than to 
eat. On these coasts it seems as if the young vigorous 
lobsters kill their own prey without trouble in finding it, 
and the bait in the wicker pots tempts only the overgrown 
and aged, whose active powers are failing them. 

I was to make the best use of my time, and at breakfast 
we talked over our plans for the day. Picnics, mountain 
walks, antiquarianizing expeditions, fishing, salt or fresh, 
were alternately proposed. The weather luckily came to 
the assistance of our irresolution. It was still intensely 
hot. The rivers were low and clear as crystal, so it was 
vain to think of the salmon. The boatman reported that 
the easterly wind was still blowing, but that from the look 
of the sky, and the breaking of the swell outside the har- 
bor, they exjDected a shift in the evening, so we agreed to 
run down the bay in the yacht as long as the land breeze 
held, and trust to the promised change to bring us back. 
The ladies declined to accompany us, the ocean roll and a 
hot sun being a trying combination even to seasoned 
stomachs. So my friend and I started alone with the boys, 
with a packed hamper to be prepared against emergencies. 
The cutter was large enough for its purjDose, and not too 
large. Though we did not intend to court bad weather, 
we could encounter it without alarm if it overtook us. We 
had a main cabin, with two sofas and a swing table ; a 
small inner cabin with a single berth, with a kitchen for- 
ward, where the men slung their hammocks. We slipped 
our moorings and ran out of the harbor, passing the Cowes 
schooner, which lay lazily at anchor. Her owner and his 
party were scattered in her various boats ; some had gone 
up to Kenmare marketing, some were pollock fishing, 



190 A Fort7iight in Kerry, 

others were engaged in the so-called amusement of shooting 
the guillemots and the puffins, which, unused to firearms, 
sat confidingly on the water to be destroyed — beautiful in 
their living motion, worse than useless when dead. We 
flung our half uttered maledictions at the idiots, who were 
bringing dishonor on the name of sportsmen. For a week 
after the bay was covered with wounded birds, which were 
dying slowly from being unable to procure food. 

Before we turned into the main river we passed an island 
on which was a singular bank of earth, wasting year by 
year by the action of the tide, and almost gone to nothing : 
it was the last remains of a moraine, deposited who can guess 
when, by a glacier which has left its scorings everywhere on 
the hill-sides. The people call it Spanish Island, and have 
a legend that one of the ships of the Armada was wrecked 
there. It is an unlikely story. No galleon which had 
doubled the Blaskets would have turned out of its course 
into the Lenmare River, nor if it had wandered into such a 
place could easily have been wrecked there. More likely it 
was a fishinsf station at a time when Newfoundland was un- 

o 

discovered, and fleets came annually to these seas from Co- 
rufia and Bilbao, for their bacalao, — their Lenten cod and 
ling. As many as two hundred Spanish smacks were then 
sometimes seen together in the harbor at Valencia. 

The breeze freshened as we cleared out of Kilmakilloge. 
The main bay is here four miles broad, and widens rapidly 
as it approaches the mouth. We saw the open Atlantic 
twenty miles from us, and we met the swell with which we 
had been threatened, but so long and easy that we rose over 
the waves, scarcely conscious of motion, and rattled along 
with a three-quarter breeze and every sail drawing, seven 
knots through the water. We were heading straight for 
ScarrifF, a rock eleven hundred feet high, which, though sev- 
eral miles from the main land, forms the extreme point of 
the chain which divides Kenmare River from Ballinskelligs 
Bay. Thousands of sea birds, wheeling and screaming over 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 191. 

the water, showed that the great shoals of small fish which 
frequent these bays in the autumn had already begun to ap- 
pear. Gannets, towering like falcons, shot down three hun- 
dred feet sheer, disappeared a moment, and rose with tiny 
sprats struggling in their beaks. Half a dozen herring hogs 
were having a pleasant time of it, and besides these, two 
enormous grampuses were showing their sharp, black fins at 
intervals, one thirty feet long, the other evidently larger, 
how much we could not tell, for he never showed his full 
length, though he rolled near us, and we could judge his di- 
mensions only from the width across the shoulders. The 
sprats were in cruel case. The whales and porpoises hunted 
them up out of the deep water. The gurnet caught them 
midway. The sea birds swooped on them as they splashed 
in terror on the surface. They too had doubtless fattened 
in their turn on smaller victims. Our boys avenged the 
shades of some of them on one set at least of their persecu- 
tors. They threw over their fishing lines, and six or seven 
big gurnet were flapping in the basket before we had cleared 
the edge of the shoal. 

Creeks and bays opened on either side of us, and closed 
again as we ran on. As we neared the mouth of the river 
we saw the waves breaking furiously on a line of rocks some 
little distance from the north shore. We edged away to- 
wards them for a nearer view, when it appeared that the 
rocks formed a natural breakwater to a still cove, a mile 
long and half a mile deep, which lay inside. There was a 
narrow opening at either extremity of the reef. The en- 
trance looked ugly enough, for the line of foam extended 
from shore to shore, and black jagged points showed them- 
selves in the hollow of the boiling surge, which would have 
made quick work with us had we grazed them; but my 
friend knew the soundings to a foot, and as the place was 
curious he, carried me inside. Instantly that we were be- 
hind the reef we were in still water three fathoms deep, 
with a clear sandy bottom. We ran along for a quarter of 



192 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

a mile, and then found ourselves suddenly in front of one of 
the wicked-looking castles of which so many ruins are to be 
seen on the coasts of Cork and Kerry. They were all built 
in the wild times of the sixteenth century, when the anarchy 
of the land was extended to the ocean, and swarms of out- 
lawed English pirates had their nests in these dangerous 
creeks. They formed alliances with the O'SuUivans and 
the M'Carties, married their daughters, and shared the plun- 
der with them which they levied indiscriminately on their 
own and all other nations. While the kingdom of Kerry 
retained its privileges under the house of Desmond, the Irish 
Deputies were unable to meddle with them by land, while 
no cruiser could have ventured to follow them by water 
through channels guarded so perilously as that by which we 
had entered. 

If the walls of that old tower could have spoken, it could 
have told us many a strange tale, of which every vestige of 
a legend has now disappeared. We know from contempo- 
rary records that the pirates were established in these places. 
The situation of the castle which we were looking at told 
unmistakably the occupation of its owner. A second deep 
creek inside the larger one, sheltered by a natural pier, led 
directly to the door-step. A couple of miles inland there 
are traces of a still earlier stratification of sea rovers, — in 
one of the largest and most remarkable of the surviving 
Danish forts. The Danes, too, had been doubtless guided 
there by the natural advantages of the situation. I would 
gladly have landed and looked at it, but time pressed. We 
left the little bay at the far end of the reef, and half an hour 
later we were rising and falling on the great waves of the 
open ocean. 

Having been dosed with hard eggs at breakfast I found 
sickness impossible. They act like wadding in a gun, keep- 
ing the charge hard and tight in its place ; and aftet* a qualm 
or two, my stomach, finding further contention would lead 
to no satisfactory result, was satisfied to leave me to enjoy 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 193 

myself. The mainland ends on the north side at the Lamb 
Head, so called perhaps because it is one of the most sav- 
age-looking crags on which stranded ship was ever shattered. 
Outside it are a series of small islands from a few acres to 
as many square miles in extent, divided from each other by 
deep channels, a quarter or half a mile in width. It is a 
place to keep clear of in hazy weather. Irish boatmen may 
be trusted while they can see their landmarks, but my 
friend told me that he was caught by a fog in this very place 
the first time that he had ever been near it. He had a chart 
and a compass, and had turned in as it was night, leaving 
the tiller to his captain. Luckily he was not asleep. The 
roar of the breakers becoming louder he went on deck to 
look about him, and he found that the fellow knew no more 
of a compass than of a steam engine, and that he was steer- 
ing dead upon the rocks. To-day, however, we ran in and 
out with absolute confidence, and we threaded our way to 
the splendid cliffs of Scarriff, the last of the group, which 
towered up towards the sea a thousand feet out of the wa- 
ter. On the land side the slope was more gradual ; it was 
covered with grass and dotted with cattle ; in a hollow we 
saw the smoke of a solitary house ; we heard a cock crow 
and the clacking of a hen, and wild, and lonely, and dreary 
as the island seemed, the people living there are very rea- 
sonably happy, and have not the slightest wish to leave it. 

From the description given of the scene by Walsingham 
the historian, Scarriff is not improbably the place where a 
Cornish knight in the time of the second Richard came to a 
deserved and terrible end. It was a very bad time in Eng- 
land. Religion and society were disorganized; and the 
savage passions of men, released from their natural re- 
straints, boiled over in lawlessness and crime. Sir John 
Arundel, a gentleman of some distinction, had gathered 
together a party of wild youths to make an expedition to 
Ireland. He was windbound either at Penzance or St. 
Ives ; and being in uneasy quarters, or the time hanging 
13 



194 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

heavy on his hands, he requested hospitahty from the ab- 
bess of a neighboring nunnery. The abbess, horrified at 
the prosj^ect of entertaining such unruly guests, begged 
him to excuse her. But neither excuses nor prayers 
availed. Arundel and his companions took possession of 
the convent, which they made the scene of unrestrained 
and frightful debauchery. The sisters were sacrificed to 
their appetites, and when the weather changed were carried 
off to the ship and compelled to accompany their violators. 
As they neared the Irish coast the gale returned in its fury. 
Superstition is the inseparable companion of cowardice and 
cruelty, and the wretched women were flung overboard to 
propitiate the demon of the storm. " Approbatum est non 
esse cura3 Deis securitatem nostram, esse ultionem." If 
Providence did not interfere to save the honor or the lives 
of the poor nuns, at least it revenged their fate. The ship 
drove before the southwester, helpless as a disabled wreck. 
She was hurled on Scarriff, or possibly on Cape Clear, and 
was broken instantly to pieces. A handful of half-drowned 
wretches were saved by the inhabitants to relate their hor- 
rible tale. Arundel himself, being a powerful swimmer, had 
struggled upon the rocks alive, but he was caught by a re- 
turning wave before he could climb beyond its reach, and 
whirled away in the boiling foam. 

With us, too, the sea was rising heavily. The wind had 
shifted to the west as the boatman had foretold, and though 
as yet there was but little of it, the mercury was falling rap- 
idly. A dark bank of clouds lay along the seaward 
horizon, and the huge waves which were rolling home, and 
flying in long green sheets up the side of the cliff, implied 
that it was blowing heavily outside. My friend had in- 
tended to take me on to the Skelligs, two other islands ly- 
ing ten miles to the northwest of us, on the larger of which 
are the remains of a church and of three or four beehive 
houses, which tradition says were once occupied by hermits. 
The Irish hermits, as we know, located themselves in many 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 195 

strange places round the coast, and may as well have 
chosen a home for themselves on the Skelligs as anywhere 
else. But it is to be noticed also, that even hermits, unless 
supjDorted like Elijah by the ravens, must have found food 
somewhere. During the winter communication with the 
mainland must have been often impossible for weeks to- 
gether, and as there is scarcely a square yard of grass on 
the whole place, they could have kept neither sheep nor 
cattle. Whoever dwelt in those houses must have lived by 
fishing. The cod fishing round the rocks is the very best 
on the whole coast ; and remembering how indispensable 
the dried cod had been made by the fasting rules of the 
Catholic i^opulation of Europe, I cannot help fancying, how- 
ever unromantic the suggestion may sound, that something 
more practical than devotion was connected with the com- 
munity that resided there. We were obliged, however, to 
abandon all idea of going so far for the present. Could we 
have reached the islands we could not have landed. The 
cutter was already pitching so heavily that the top of Scar- 
riff, though immediately over us, was occasionally hidden by 
the waves. If we ventured further we might have found 
it impossible to recover Kenmare Bay, and might have 
been obliged to run for Valencia ; so we hauled our wind, 
went about, and turned our bows homewards. The motion 
became more easy as we fell off before the rollers. My 
friend gave up the tiller to one of the men, and we got out 
our hamper and stretched ourselves on deck to eat our din- 
ner, for which the tossing, strange to say, had sharpened 
our appetite. There is no medium at sea. Xou are either 
dead sick or ravenous, and we, not excluding the two boys, 
were the latter. 

Among human pleasures there are few more agreeable 
than that of the cigar which follows a repast of this kind, 
the cold chicken and the claret having been disposed of, 
when St. Emilion has tasted like the choicest Lafitte, the 
sun warm and not too warm, the wind at our backs, and the 



196 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

spring cushions from the cabin tossed about in the confusion 
which suits the posture in which we are most at ease. As 
we lay lazily enjoying ourselves, my host j^ointed out to me 
one more of the interesting features of the coast. Round 
the Lamb Head to the north, facing the islands among 
which we had been dodging, was another small bay, cut out 
by the action of the waves, at the bottom of which we saw 
the water breaking on a white line of sand. Behind the 
sand two valleys met, the slopes of which were covered 
prettily with wood ; and among the trees we could see the 
smoke and the slated roof of the once famous Derrynane 
Abbey. There was the ancestral home of the world-cele- 
brated Daniel O'Connell, the last of the old Irish. His 
forefathers, the Connels of Iveragh, like every other fomily 
on the coast of Kerry, had gone handsomely into the smug- 
gling trade. Cargoes of tea and tobacco run on those sands 
were inclosed in butter casks, and sent over the hills on 
horses' backs to Cork, to the store of a confederate mer- 
chant, and thence shipped for London as Irish produce. 
On those moors Dan the Great hunted his harriers. In the 
halls of that abbey he feasted friend or foe like an ancient 
chieftain, and entertained visitors from every corner of Eu- 
rope. All is gone now. The famine which broke O'Con- 
nell's heart lies like an act of oblivion between the Old 
Ireland and the New, and his own memory is fading like 
the memory of the age which he represented. Some few 
local anecdotes of trifling interest hang about the moun- 
tains. They say of Dan, as they said of Charles II. : he 
was the father of his people, and by the powers 'twas a fine 
family he had of them. But Ireland has ceased to care for 
him. His* fame blazed like a straw bonfire, and has left 
behind it scarce a shovelfiil of ashes. Never any public 
man had it in his power to do so much real good for his 
country, nor was there ever one who accomplished so little. 
The Lamb Head once more closes in. The wind is fast 
rising ; the crests of the rollers are beginning to break ; 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 197 

the yacht flies down the slopes, and steers hard as the 
pursuing wave overtakes and lifts her. Down comes the 
topsail ; we do not need it now : more than once we have 
plunged into the wave in front of us, and shipped green 
water over our bows. The clouds come up, with occasional 
heavy drops of rain. Macgillicuddy's Reeks are already 
covered ; and on the lower mountains the mist is beginning 
to form. It will be a wet night, and the rivers will fish to- 
morrow. The harbor has been alive with salmon for the 
last fortnight, waiting for a fresh to take them up. We 
have still an hour's daylight when we recover the mouth of 
Kilmakilloge, and are in sight of the woods of Derreen 
again. As we turn into the harbor the wind is broken off 
by the land. We are almost becalmed, and the yacht drags 
slowly through the water. Towards evening the whiting 
pollock take freely, so the lines are laid out again, and we 
trail a couple of spinners. One is instantly taken. A 
small fellow — three pounds weight — comes in unresist- 
ingly, and is basketed. A minute after the second line is 
snatched out of the hands of my young bathing companion, 
who had hokLof it. One of the boatmen catches it, but is 
unused to light tackle, and drags as if he was hauling up an 
anchor. He gathers in a yard or two, and then comes a 
convulsive struggle. Each side pulls his best. One mo- 
ment of uncertainty, a plunge and a splash at the end of the 
line in our wake, and then all is over ; and we can imagine, 
without fear of contradiction, that we had hold of a conger 
eel at least, if not the sea-serpent himself. 

The rain came down as we expected: rain like the 
torrents of the tropics, such as we rarely see in these 
islands outside Kerry. The mountains arrest the wet- 
laden currents as they come in from the Atlantic, con- 
densing the moisture into masses of cloud, which at once 
discharge themselves in cataracts. We spend the evenmg 
hunting out our fishing-boxes, sorting flies, and trymg 
casting-lines. The sky clears soon after sunrise. The 



198 A Fortniyht in Kerry. 

kee^Der has been down early to examine the condition of 
the water, and is waiting for us with his rejDort on the rock 
outside the hall door after breakfast. 

There is no haste. The rivers are still coming down 
brown and thick, and though the floods run off rapidly 
there will be no fishing till towards noon. We look about 
us, and the rock on which we are standing is itself a curi- 
osity. The surface of it has been ground as smooth as a 
table. In the direction of the valley, and crossing the 
lines of cleavage, it is grooved by the ice-plane which has 
passed over it. The j^ebbles brought down from the liills 
and bedded in the under-surface of the glacier have cut 
into the stone like chisels, and have left marks which the 
rain of unnumbered years has failed to erase. Such is the 
modern theory, which is accepted as absolutely proved be- 
cause we are at present unable to conceive any other 
agency by which the effect could have been brought about. 
Yet the inability to form another hypothesis may arise, it 
is at least possible, from limitations in ourselves, and at- 
tends as a matter of course every generally received 
scientific conjecture. The theory of epicycles was once 
considered to be proved, because no other explanation 
could then be offered of the retrogression of the planets ; 
and when we consider the fate of so many past philoso- 
phies, accepted in their time as certain, and made the 
ridicule of later generations, misgivings obtrude them- 
selves that even the glacier theory a hundred years hence 
may have gone the way of its predecessors, and that the 
ice may have become as mythical as the footprints of the 
fairies. 

But the rock has a later and more human interest. 
The fortunate Englishman to whom at the close of the 
seventeenth century these vast estates passed by confisca- 
tion, was contented to leave the heads of the old families 
shorn of their independence, but still ruling as his repre- 
sentatives on the scene of their ancient dominions. So 



r 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 199 

matters continued for more than a century. The O's and 
the Mac's retained their place, even under the penal laws ; 
and the absentee landlord was contented with his rent 
and asked no questions. A change came after the Union. 
The noble owner of the Kenmare mountains awoke to the 
value and perhaps to the responsibilities of his inheritance. 
He prepared to draw his connection closer with it and to 
resume the privileges which had been too long spared. 
Macfinnan Dhu, the black Macfinnan, the predecessor of 
Morty, was then ruling at Derreen. The lord of the soil, 
to soften the blow which he was about to administer, sent 
Macfinnan a present of wine, which arrived duly from 
London in a large hamper. Macfinnan carried it to the 
top of the rock on which we were standing, called up 
every Irish curse which hung in song or prose in the 
recollection of the valley, on the intruding stranger who 
was robbing the Celt of the land of his fathers. At each 
imprecation he smashed a bottle on the stone, and only 
ceased his litany of vengeance when the last drop had 
been spilt of his infernal libation. Such is the story on 
the spot ; true or false, who can tell ? My host said that 
in the unusual heat of the summer before last the turf 
which covers the side of the rock had shrunk a foot or two 
beyond its usual limits, and that fragments of broken bot- 
tles were indisputably found there ; but whether they were 
the remains of Macfinnan's solemnity, or were the more 
vulgar relics of a later drinking-bout, we are left to our 
own conjecture. 

But I must introduce my readers to the keeper, who is 
a prominent person at Derreen. He is a Scot from Aber- 
deen, by name Jack Harper, descendant it may be of the 
Harper who called " time " over the witches' caldron, but 
himself as healthy a piece of humanity as ever stood six 
feet in his stockings, or stalked a stag upon the Gram- 
pians. He was imported as a jierson not to be influenced 
by the ways and customs of the country. The agent, 



200 A ForUiight in Kerry, 

however, forgot to import a wife along with him. It was 
not in nature that a handsome yomig fellow of twenty-five 
should remain the solitary occuiDant of his lodge, and he 
soon found an Irish lassie who was not unwilling to share 
it with him. Jack was a Protestant and obstinate in his 
way, and declined the chapel ceremonial, but the registrar 
at Kenmare settled the legal part of the business. The 
priest arranged the rest with the wife, and a couple of 
children clinging to the skirts of Jack's kilt showed in 
face and figure the double race from which they had 
sprung : the boy thick-limbed, yellow-haired, with blue 
eyes, and a strong Scotch accent, which he had caught 
from his father ; while the girl with dark skin, soft brown 
curls, and features of refined and exquisite delicacy, showed 
the blood of the pure Celt of Kerry, unspoilt by infiltra- 
tion from Dane or Norman. Being alone in his creed in 
the valley, Jack attends chapel, though holding the pro- 
ceedings there in some disdain. He does not trouble him- 
self about confession, but he pays the priest his dues, and 
the priest in turn he tells me is worth a dozen watchers to 
him. If his traps are stolen on the mountains, or a salmon 
is made away with on the spawning beds, he rej)orts his 
grievances at the chapel, and the curses of the Church are 
at his service. Religion down here means right and 
wrong, and materially, perhaps, not much besides. 

But the morning is growing on. I am left in Jack's 
hands for the day, my host having business elsewhere. He 
takes charge of rod and landing net, slings a big basket on 
his back, and whistling his dogs about him, and with a 
short pipe in his mouth, he leads the way down the drive 
to the gate. We halt on the bridge of the little river, but 
a glance at the bridge pool shows that we shall do no good 
there. The water is still muddy and thick, and not a fish 
will move in it for two hours at least. We must go to the 
second river, where the mountain floods are first intercepted 
by a lake : in this the dirt settles, and leaves the stream 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 201 

that runs out of it to the sea comparatively clear. We 
have a mile and a half to walk, and I hear on the way 
what Jack has to tell about the place and people. Before 
the famine the glen had been densely inhabited, and had" 
suffered terribly in consequence. Ruined cottages in all 
directions showed where human creatures had once multi- 
plied like rabbits in a warren. Miles upon miles of unfin- 
ished roads, now overgrown with gorse, were monuments 
of the efforts which had been made to find them in work 
and food. But the disaster was too great and too sudden 
and too universal to be so encountered. Hundreds died, 
and hundreds more were provided with free passages to 
America, and the valley contains but a fourth of its old in- 
habitants. Its present occupants are now doing well. 
There are no signs of poverty among them. They are 
tenants at will, but so secure is the custom of the country 
that they have no fear of dispossession. An English polit- 
ical economist had once suggested that they should all be 
got rid' of, and the glen be turned into a deer forest. But 
the much-abused Irish proprietors are less inhuman than 
the Scotch, and here at least there is no disposition to out- 
rage the affection with which the people cling to their 
homes. There is, however, no wish among them to return 
to the old state of things. When a tenant dies his eldest 
son succeeds him. The brothers emigrate where friends 
are waiting for them in America, and they carry with them 
a hope, not always disappointed, of returning when they 
have a balance at the bank, and can stock a farm in the 
old country on their own account. 

We pass a singular mound covered with trees at the road- 
side, with a secluded field behind it sprinkled over with 
hawthorns. The field is the burying-place of the babies 
that die unbaptized, unconsecrated by the Church, but hal- 
lowed by sentiment, and treated seemingly with more rev- 
erence than the neglected graveyard. The mound is circu- 
lar, with sloping sides twenty feet high, and sixty feet in 



202 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

diameter at the top. It is a rath, of which there are ten or 
twelve in the glen, and many more in other parts of Kerry. 
This one has never been opened, being called the Fairy's 
house, and is protected by superstition ; another like it, at 
the back of Derreen, has been cleared out, and can be en- 
tered without difficulty. The outer wall must have been 
first built of stone. The interior was then divided into nar- 
row compartments, ten or twelve feet long by live feet 
broad, each with an air-hole through the wall, and commu- 
nicating with one another by low but firmly constructed 
doors. Massive slabs were laid at the top to form a roof, 
and the whole structure was finally covered in with turf. 
They were evidently houses of some kind, though when 
built or by whom is a mystery. Human remains are rarely 
found in any of them, and whether these chambers were 
themselves occupied, or whether they were merely the cel- 
lars of some lighter building of timber and wicker-work 
raised above them, is a jDoint on which the antiquarians 
are undecided. Whatever they were, however, they are 
monuments of some past age of Irish history ; and the 
stone circles and gigantic pillars, standing wild and weird in 
the gorges of the mountains, are perhaps the tombs of the 
race who lived in them. No one knows at present, for 
Derreen lies out of the line of tourists. By and by, when 
the feeling of respect for burial jDlaces, however ancient, 
which still clings to Kerry, has been civilized away, the 
tombs will be broken into and searched, and then as else- 
where the curious antiquary will find golden torques and 
armlets among the crumbling bones of the chiefs of the age 
of Ossian. 

But here we are at the river ; we have passed two salt 
lagoons surroimded with banks of reeds, which are the 
haunts in winter of innumerable wild-fowl, and even now 
are dotted over with broods of flappers which have been 
hatclied among the flags. At the top of the farther of these 
we cross a bridge where the river enters it, for the wind is 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 203 

coming from the other side aud is blowing three quarters of 
a gale. We follow the bank for half a mile, where the 
water is broken and shallow, and the salmon pass through 
without resting. Then turning the angle of a rock, we 
come to a pool a quarter of a mile long, terminating in a 
circular basin eighty yards across, out of which the water 
plunges through a narrow gorge. 

The pool has been cut through a peat bog, and the 
greater part of it is twenty feet deep. . A broad fringe of 
water-lilies lines the banks, leaving, however, an available 
space for throwing a fly upon between them. This is the 
great resting-place of the fish on their way to the lake and 
the upper river. The water is high, and almost flowing 
over on the bog. The wind catches it fairly, tearing along 
the surface and sweeping up the crisp waves in white 
clouds of spray. The party of strangers who had cards to 
fish were before us, but they are on the wrong side, trying 
vainly to send their flies in the face of the southwester, 
which whirls their casting-lines back over their heads. 
They have caught a peal or two, and one of them reports 
that he was broken by a tremendous fish at the end of the 
round pool. Jack directs them to a bend higher up, where 
they will find a second pool as good as this one, with a 
more favorable slant of wind, while I put my rod together 
and turn over the leaves of my fly-book. Among the mar- 
vels of art and nature I know nothing equal to a salmon-fly. 
It resembles no insect, winged or unwinged, which the fish 
can have seen. A shrimp, perhaps, is the most like it, if 
there are degrees to utter dissimilarity. Yet every river is 
supposed to have its favorite flies. Size, color, shape, all 
are peculiar. Here vain tastes prevail for golden pheasant 
and blue and crimson paroquet. There the salmon are as 
sober as Quakers, and will look at nothing but drabs and 
browns. Nine parts of this are fancy, but there is still a 
portion of truth in it. Bold hungry fish will take anything 
in any river ; shy fish will undoubtedly rise and splash at a 



204 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

stranger's fly, while they will swallow what is offered them 
by any one who knows their ways. It may be something 
in the color of the water : it may be something in the color 
of the banks : experience is too uniform to allow the fact 
itself to be questioned. Under Jack's direction, I select 
small flies about the size of green drakes: one a sombre 
gray, with silver twist about him, a claret hackle, a mallard 
wing, streaked faintly on the lower side with red and blue. 
The drop fly is still darker, with purple legs and olive green 
wings and body. 

We move to the head of the pool and begin to cast in 
the gravelly shallows, on which the fish lie to feed in a 
flood, a few yards above the deep water. A white trout or 
two rise, and presently I am fast in something which excites 
momentary hopes. The heavy rod bends to the butt. A 
yard or two of line runs out, but a few seconds show that it 
is only a large trout which has struck at the fly with his 
tail, and has been hooked foul. He cannot break me, and 
I do not care if he escapes, so I bear hard upon him and 
drag him by main force to the side, where Harper slips the 
net under his head, and the next moment he is on the bank. 
Two pounds within an ounce or so, but clean run from the 
sea, brought up last night's flood, and without a stain of the 
bog-water on the pure silver of his scales. He has dis- 
turbed the shallow, so we move a few steps down. 

There is an alder bush on the opposite side, where the 
strength of the river is running. It is a long cast. The 
wind is blowing so hard that I can scarcely keep my foot- 
ing, and the gusts whirl so unsteadily that I cannot hit the 
exact spot where, if there is a salmon in the neighborhood, 
he is lying. 

The line flies out straight at last, but I have now 
thrown a few inches too far ; my tail fly is in the bush, 
dangling across an overhanging bough. An impatient 
movement, a jerk, or a straight pull, and I am " hung up," 
as the phrase is, and delayed for half an hour at least. 



A Fortnight in Kerry, 205 

Happily there is a lull in the storm. I shake the point of 
the rod. The vibration runs along the line ; the fly drops 
softly like a leaf upon the water — and as it floats away 
something turns heavily, and a huge brown back is visible 
for an instant through a rift in the surface. But the line 
comes home. He was an old stager, as we could see by 
his color, no longer ravenous as when fresh from the salt 
water. He was either lazy and missed the fly, or it was 
not entirely to his mind. He was not touched, and we 
drew back to consider. " Over him again while he is an- 
gry," is the saying in some rivers, and I have known it to 
answer where the fish feed greedily. But it will not do 
here ; we must give him time ; and we turn again to the 
fly-book. When a salmon rises at a small fly as if he 
meant business yet fails to take it, the rule is to try 
another of the same pattern a size larger. This too, how- 
ever, just now Jack thinks unfavorably of. The salmon is 
evidently a very large one, and will give us enough to do 
if we hook him. He therefore, as one pijecaution, takes 
off the drop fly lest it catch in the water-lilies. He next 
puts the knots of the casting-line through a severe trial ; 
replaces an unsound joint with a fresh link of gut, and 
finally produces out of his hat a " hook " — he will not 
call it a fly — of his own dressing. It is like a particol- 
ored father-long-legs, a thing which only some frantic 
specimen of orcliid ever seriously approached, a creature 
whose wings were two strips of the fringe of a peacock's 
tail, whose legs descended from blue jay through red to 
brown, and terminated in a pair of pink trailers two inches 
lono^. Jack had found it do, and he believed it would do 
for me. And so it did. I began to throw again six feet 
above the bush, for a salmon often shifts his ground after 
rising. One cast — a second — another trout rises which 
we receive with an anathema, and drag the fly out of his 
reach. The fourth throw there is a swirl like the wave 
which arises under the blade of an oar, a sharp sense of 



206 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

liard resistance, a pause, and then a rusli for the dear life. 
The wheel shrieks, the line hisses through the rings, and 
thirty yards down the pool the great fish springs madly six 
feet into the air. The hook is firm in his upper jaw ; he 
had not shaken its hold, for the hook had gone into the 
bone — 2^i'®tt,y subject of delight for a reasonable man, an 
editor of a magazine, and a would-be philosopher, turned 
fifty ! The enjoyments of the unreasoning part of us can- 
not be defended on grounds of reason, and experience 
shows that men who are all logic and morals, and have 
nothing of the animal left in them, are poor creatures 
after all. 

Any way, I defy philosophy with a twenty -pound salmo^i 
fast hooked, and a pool right ahead four hundred yards 
long and half full of water-lilies. " Keep him up the 
strame," shrieked a Paddy, who, on the screaming of the 
wheel, had flung down his spade in the turf bog and 
rushed up to see the sport. " Keep him up the strame, 
your honor — fcloody wars ! you'll lost him else." We 
were at fault, Jack and I. We did not understand why 
down stream was particularly dangerous, and Pat was too 
eager and too busy swearing to explain himself. Alas, his 
meaning became soon but too intelligible. I had over- 
taken the fish on the bank and had wheeled in the line 
again, but he was only collecting himself for a fresh rush, 
and the next minute it seemed as if the bottom had been 
knocked out of the pool and an opening made into infinity. 
Round flew the wheel again ; fifty yards were gone in as 
many seconds, the rod was bending double, and the line 
pointed straight down ; straight as if there was a lead at 
the end of it and unlimited space in which to sink. " Ah, 
didn't I tell ye so ? " said Pat ; " what will we do now ? " 
Too late Jack remembered that fourteen feet down at the 
bottom of that pool lay the stem of a fallen oak, below 
which the water had made a clear channel. The fish had 
turned under it, and whether he was now up the river or 



A Fortnight in Kerry, 207 

down, or where he was, who could tell ? He stopped at 
last. " Hold him hard," said Jack, hurling off his clothes, 
and while I was speculating whether it would be possible 
to drag him back the way that he had gone, a pink body- 
flashed from behind me, bounded off the bank with a 
splendid header, and disappeared. He was under for a 
quarter of a minute ; when he rose he had the line in his 
hand between the fish and the tree. 

" All right ! " he sputtered, swimming with the other 
hand to the bank and scrambling up. " Run the rest of 
the line off the reel and out through the rings." He had 
divined by a brilliant instinct the only remedy for our 
situation. The thing was done, fast as Pat and I could ply 
our fingers. The loose end was drawn round the log, and 
while Jack was humoring the fish with his hand, and danc- 
ing up and down the bank regardless of proprieties, we had 
carried it back down the rings, replaced it on the reel, 
wound in the slack, and had again command of the situa- 
tion. 

The salmon had played his best stroke. It had failed 
him, and he now surrendered like a gentleman. A mean- 
spirited fish will go to the bottom, bury himself in the 
weeds, and sulk. Ours set his head towards the sea, and 
sailed down the length of the pool in the open water with- 
out attempting any more plunges. As his strength fiiiled, 
he turned heavily on his back, and allowed himself to be 
drawn to the shore. The gaff was in his side and he was 
ours. He was larger than we had guessed him. Clean 
run he would have weighed twenty-five pounds. The fresh 
water had reduced him to twenty-two, but without soften- 
ins: his muscle or touchino- his strenijth. 

The fight had tired us all. If middle asje does not im- 
pair the enjoyment of sport, it makes the appetite for it 
less voracious, and a little pleases more than a great deal. 
I delight in a mountain walk when I must work hard for 
my five brace of grouse. I see no amusement in dawdling 



208 A Fortnight in Kerry, 

over a lowland moor where the packs are as thick as 
chickens in a poultry-yard. I like better than most things 
a day with my own dogs in scattered covers, when I know 
not what may rise, a woodcock, an odd pheasant, a snipe 
in the out-lying willow-bed, and perhaps a mallard or a 
teal. A hare or two falls in agreeably when the mistress 
of the house takes an interest in the bag. I detest battues 
and hot corners, and slaughter for slaughter's sake. I 
wish every tenant in England had his share in amuse- 
ments, which in moderation are good for us all, and was 
allowed to shoot such birds or beasts as were bred on his 
own farm, any clause in his lease to the contrary notwith- 
standing. 

Anyhow I had had enough of salmon fishing for the day. 
We gave the rod and the basket to Pat to carry home, the 
big fish which he was too proud to conceal flapping on his 
back. Jack and I ate our luncheon and smoked our pipes 
beside the fall, and Jack, before we went home, undertook 
to show me the lake. The river followed the bend of the 
valley. We took a shorter cut over a desolate and bare 
piece of mountain, and as we crossed the ridge we found 
ourselves suddenly in the luxuriant softness of a miniature 
Killarney. The lake was scarcely a mile in length, but 
either the woodcutters had been less busy there, or Nature 
had repaired the havoc that they had made. Half a dozen 
small islands were scattered on it, covered with arbutus 
and holly. The rocks on one side fell in grand precipices 
to the water. At the end was the opening of Glanmore 
valley, with its masses of forest, its emerald meadows and 
cooing wood-pigeons, and bright, limpid river reaches. 
For its size there is no more lovely spot in the south of 
Ireland than Glanmore. It winds among the mountains 
for six miles beyond the lake, closed in at the extremity 
with the huge mass of Hungry Hill, from the top of which 
you look down upon Berehaven. Here too the idea of 
sport pursued us — stray deer wandered over now and then 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 209 

from GlengarifF — and my compauion had stories of 
mighty bags of woodcocks made sometimes there when the 
snow was on the hills. My eye, however, was rather 
caught by a singular ruin of modern, unvenerable kind on 
the larfifest of the islands. Some chieftain's castle had 
once stood there, as we could see from the remains of mas- 
sive walls on the water line : but this had been long de- 
stroyed, and in the place of it there had been a cottage of 
some pretensions, which in turn was now roofless. The 
story of it, so far as Jack could tell me, was this. 

Forty years ago or thereabouts a Major , who had 

difficulties with his creditors, came into these parts to hide 
himself, built the cottage on the island, and lived there ; and 
when the bailiffs found him out held them at bay with pis- 
tol and blunderbuss. The j^eople of the glen provided him 
with food. The Irish are good friends to any one who is on 
bad terms with the authorities. Like Goethe's elves — 

Ob er heilig, ob er bose, 
Jammert sie der Uiigliicksmann — 

So here Major fished and shot and laughed at the 

attempts to arrest liim. His sin, however, found him out at 
last. You may break the English laws as you please in 
Ireland, but there are some laws which you may not break, 

as Major found. In the farmhouse which supi^lied him 

with his milk and eggs, was a girl who anywhere but in 
Glanmore would have been called exceptionally beautiful. 

Major abused the confidence which was placed in him, 

and seduced her. He had to fly for his life. Such is the 
present legend, as true, perhaps, as much that passes by the 

name of history. Major himself might tell another 

story. 

My space has run out. My tale is still half told. The 
next day was Sunday. The day following was August 20, 
when Irish grouse-shooting begins. If the reader's patience 
is unexhausted he shall hear of the scratch-bag we made in 
a scramble of thirty miles ; of the weird woman that ^vc 
U 



210 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

saw among the cliffs : of the " crass bull," that we fell in 
with, and the double murder in Coomeengeera. I have 
to tell him too how the grandson of Macfinnan Dhu was 
caught red-handed spearing salmon, and how the bloody- 
Saxon had to stand between him and eviction. How we 
held a land court in the hall at Derreen, and settled a dis- 
puted inheritance. How we went to the Holy Lake and 
saw the pilgrims from America there, and how when mass 
was over they made a night of it with the whiskey booths 
and the card-sharpers. How we had another sail upon the 
river, how we attended a tenant-right meeting at the board 
of guardians at Kenmare, and how the chairman floored 
the middle-man there to the delight of all his audience — 
the chairman, the brightest of companions, the most charm- 
ing of men of business, the hero of the seal fight in Mr. 
Trench's " Realities of Irish Life." All this the reader shall 
hear if his curiosity leads him to wish for it. If he is sick 
of this light fare and desires more solid pudding, we will 
dress our dishes to his mind, and the rest of my pleasant 
memories shall abide with myself, woven in bright colors in 
the web of my life by the fingers of the three sisters — my 
own, and never to be taken from me, let the Future bring 
what fate it will. 



EECIPROCAL DUTIES OF STATE AND 
SUBJECT. 



The "Pall Mall Gazette," the "Times," and the Liberal 
press in general, tell us that the English intending emigrant 
can earn half a crown in the United States, where he can 
earn but a florin in Canada, and that it is therefore senti- 
mental nonsense to expect or even desire him to prefer an 
English colony. The fact, in the first place, is not true. 
There is a better organization at New York for the recep- 
tion and distribution of the emigrants, but the wages of 
labor in Canada are as high as they are in any part of the 
American continent except California, and the cost of living 
is less. If, however, the American wages were distinctly 
higher, it is the first time that the chief duty of man has 
be'en proclaimed so nakedly to lie in making money. Ad- 
miral Maury was offered rank and fortune if he would take 
charge of an observatory in Russia. He prefers a pittance 
as a schoolmaster in the crushed and still suffering Confed- 
eracy. At the risk of being called sentimental, I declare 
that I would sooner myself earn reasonable wages in the 
English dominions than be a millionaire in New York ; and 
the'^most practical of Yankees could be bribed by nothing 
that we could offer him to become permanently a British 
subject. The working men themselves do not appreciate 
the kindness of their advocates. The Irish consider it the 
feult of the English Government that they cannot remain 
at home. Those who go hate us. Those who stay hate us. 
We have four millions of the bitterest enemies in the Irish 
Americans. We have Fenianism in Ireland itself, and tlie 



212 Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject. 

danger is growing steadily with every fresh shipload which 
is landed on the shores of the Union. 

The English and Scotch laborer or artisan has struggled 
hard hitherto to hold fcist his nationality. He has gone to 
Canada, to the Cape, to Australia, or to New Zealand. To 
the States, so far, he has gone sparingly and unwillingly. 
The tide is changing at last. The hundreds of a few years ago 
are now becoming thousands, but there is the same resent- 
ment among them which we see in the Irish. The English 
workman does not consider that he ought to be enabled to 
live at home, but he does not like to be flung aside as if he 
was of no value. The State, he thinks, ought to help him 
to go to one of its own dependencies. He too goes away, bit- 
ter and savage with the old country. His friends at home are 
no better pleased. In a few years we may have, we indispu- 
tably shall have, a million or two of Anglo- American citizens 
with an equally agreeable disposition to do us all the harm 
they can, and the great mass of English working men at 
home looking to America as their best friend. Yet, in the 
face of these phenomena, even the Prime Minister holds up 
the Irish emigration as an example to be imitated, as a 
splendid proof of the success of the voluntary principle, and 
as an argument against the interposition of the State. The 
emigrant believes himself the victim of injurious neglect. 
His one thought thenceforward is the hope of revenge. He 
is a citizen of the great rival nationality, and should so 
frightful a calamity as a war with America overtake us, he 
may be relied on to do his worst for our humiliation. The 
situation is so transparent that writers who still insist that 
the State shall remain passive cannot be blind to it. 
The feelings or the principles therefore which lie at the bot- 
tom of their resolution should be acknowledged or at least 
examined. Either we must assume a determination to 
avoid war even at the cost of honor, — or there is a belief 
that in the present state of the world war is really impossi- 
ble, — or else it is thought that the State as a State has no 



Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject. 213 

concern with such matters, and is unable in the nature of 
things to exercise any effective control over them. The 
distribution of human creatures over the globe must be held 
to be the work of general laws, with which it is absurd to 
interfere; these laws may act favorably towards England 
or they may act unftivorably ; England can as little further 
them in the one case as it can hinder them in the other. 
We might wish the climate of these islands to be milder 
than it is, or drier than it is ; but we do not call on gov- 
ernment to alter the position of the poles, or raise the tem- 
perature of the Gulf Stream. 

This is evidently the theory ; but it does not satisfy those 
who complain. English and Irish working people imagine 
that they are injured, either because they are not provided 
with occupation at home, — a matter equally with which 
the government declares that it has nothing to do, — or 
because they are not assisted to go where work is waiting 
for them in our own dependencies. They have an impres- 
sion that the government has duties towards them which 
the government denies to exist. Their perjDlexity is in- 
creased because on these and many kindred subjects they 
see in other countries their own theories recognized and 
acted on. They see the same in the past history of their 
own country. The intellectual progress of the classes who 
profess the new doctrine has been so rapid that the mass of 
the peoj^le has been unable to keep up with them. It is 
worth while therefore to analyze the limits of an English 
Government's duty, as it is now understood by the repre- 
sentatives of Liberalism; and, if these limits are rightly 
defined, to point out the unreasonableness of resentment 
when statesmen decline to transgress them. 

The sentimental relations, as they are scornfully called, 
between governors and governed can be traced historically. 
The father brings his children into the world, teaches and 
trains them, provides for them till they are able to provide 
for themselves, and receives in return loyal affection and 



214 Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject. 

support in his old age. The family develops into a clan. 
The elder branch retains priority. The collateral kindred 
cling together with common interests and under a common 
leadership. The chief, either hereditary or elective, be- 
comes the protector of the rest, leads them in battle, fights 
for them, and legislates for them. His person is made 
sacred. His remotest dependant give his life cheerfully to 
save him from harm, with no consciousness of self-sacrifice, 
but as a matter of simple duty. There is devotion on one 
side, and benefits received or supposed to be received on the 
other. The devotion has been, perhaps, often in excess of 
the benefit ; generosity does not look curiously into the ac- 
count of debtor and creditor. It is enough that superiors 
and inferiors are thus bound together under a permanent 
tie which both sides in some sort recognize, and under 
those conditions a sentiment of loyalty develops itself of its 
own accord, which knows no limit either in this world or 
the next. At present we are told that a man ought to 
change his nationality for an extra sixpence a day. An old 
Scotch nurse once came to die, who was the sole depositary 
of .a mysterious secret affecting the descent of property, and 
touching the good name of the house in which she had lived. 
A priest urged her to confess, and reminded her of provid- 
ing for the safety of her soul. " The safety of my soul ! " 
she said, " and would you put the honor of an auld Scottish 
family in competition with the soul of a poor creature like 
me?" 

The clan passes into a nation, but the same idea con- 
tinues. The chief becomes a sovereign. Tradition aiid 
rule of thumb are exchanged for written laws. Society 
divides, cities spring up, and towns and villages, castles and 
churches, farmhouses and cottages spread over the country, 
and the human swarm separates into its countless occupa- 
tions ; but loyalty to the ruling power loses at first nothing 
of its tenacity, and to maintain the lawful king in his place 
is the first of the subjects' obligations. It mattered little to 



Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject. 'Zlo 

the material interests of the English nation whether it was 
ruled over by White Rose or by Red, but it mattered infi- 
nitely whether the lawful owner of the throne should be de- 
frauded of his right. Rule and custom could not decide, and 
there was an appeal to the God of battles. The barons 
ranged themselves according to their convictions. The ten- 
ants gave their blood faithfully and devotedly under their 
lord's leaderships. The acknowledged sovereign in this and 
all other European countries was the representative of the 
Almighty. A Claudius could say : 

There is such majesty doth hedge a king 
That treason dare but peep at what it would. 

The Duke in " Measure for Measure " would have even 

the devil 
Be sometimes honored for his burning throne. 

Treason was the summoning up of all real and all imag- 
inable crimes. The most horrible tortures were held the 
just reward of the unsuccessful conspirator. 

While the people were still in theory the prince's 
children, the people supported the prince and the prince in 
turn protected the people. A Church was maintained to 
care for their souls ; an organization of public servants to 
superintend their lives and labor. The State charged itself 
with the detailed care of the subject, circumscribing his 
position in life, and defining his rights as well as his duties. 
It provided or attempted to provide that every one willing 
to work should be able to support himself Jby industry. 
The meanest child was not neglected. There was some one 
always who was charged with the duty of caring for it. 
Holders of land had obligations along with their tenures 
which they were responsible and punishable for neglecting. 
Their interests were held subordinate to the nation's inter- 
ests ; and the nation's interest was to have the moral rule 
of right and wrong observed in all transactions between 
man and man. That the State was often tyrannical, often 



2l'l Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject, 

selfish, often ignorant, mean, and unjust, might be expected 
from the nature of the case. The rulers were but men of 
limited knowledge, subject to all common temptations, and 
subject also to special temptations born out of their position 
of authority. It is now assumed that the harm that they 
did was incomparably greater than the good ; that nine 
tenths of the old English legislation was directly mischiev- 
ous ; that the remaining tenth was innocent only because it 
was inoperative ; that in depriving men of their independ- 
ence the government took away from them the natural 
stimulus to exertion, and made impossible those manly vir- 
tues which are brought out only in those who are compelled 
to rely upon themselves. In the restriction of the functions 
of government it is implied and admitted that the loyalty 
which was born of them must be eliminated also ; and as 
the government to the masses of the people represents the 
unit of the country, there departs with loyalty the kindred 
obligation of patriotism. In these free modern times men 
govern themselves, and therefore their loyalty is to them- 
selves. The sentimental virtues are treated as mistaken 
notions of duty, rising out of an unwholesome and exploded 
condition of society. The State no longer takes charge of 
the people, and the people, if they are wise, will understand 
that they no longer owe anything to the State. The in- 
quiry, whether Englishmen may not wish to remain Eng- 
lishmen even at some sacrifice to themselves, in another 
part of the world ? — whether the offshoots of England 
mio'ht not remain attached to it as a clan to its chief ? — is 
set aside as out of date, with a smile : and it is only be- 
cause old-fashioned feelings still absurdly linger among 
such of us as are imperfectly educated in sound political 
philosophy, that so many false expectations, and so much 
irrational disappointment, are imported into the discussion 
of our social difficulties. The government is now com- 
pletely constitutional. It is a government of the people 
themselves. It no longer resides in a person or a class. It 



Recipi'ocal Duties of State and Subject. 217 

has nothing sacred about it. It is born out of majorities 
in the House of Commons, and changes with the wavering 
of opinion. It disclaims abstract considerations of justice, 
and knows of nothing but expediency. It no longer rules 
the different classes which compose society, but represents 
them, and is a something gradually sinking into a nothing, 
begotten out of the collision of their interests. To the im- 
agination of masses, meanwhile, it remains what it used to 
be. Old ideas that it owes duties to them still cling to their 
modes of thinking, and they have not themselves shaken off 
the sense of obligation on their own part. They know, for 
instance, that if they take service in the army or in the 
police they will fight, and, if necessary, be killed. They 
imagine vaguely that even in working for a private master 
they are, in some sense, serving their country. They do 
not recognize the reception of so much pay as a discharge 
in full of what society owes them. They are born on Eng- 
lish soil, as part of the English nation ; and they are hurt 
and indignant when England answers that it has nothing 
to do with them, that they are emancipated, that they are 
their own masters, and must take the rough side of freedom 
as well as the smooth. If this be emancipation they did not 
ask for it, and they do not value it when thrust upon them. 
I once heard a young athletic navvy say he cared nothing 
for politics. No reform that he had ever heart! of had been 
of use to him or his. All he thought was that when a poor 
fellow had worked for a master the best part of his life, the 
master ought to keep him when he couldn't work any 
longer. In others words, he wished to return to serfdom. 

What then are the functions of the State as they are now 
understood in England ? And what effects are likely to be 
produced on the character of the people when the tradi- 
tional sentiment has died out, and they understand what it 
really means ? 

Modern English Government has been said to consist in 
collecting the taxes and spending them. More sympathef- 



218 Mecijjrocal Duties of State and Subject. 

ically it might be defined as a contrivance to secure the 
greatest liberty to the greatest number — liberty meaning 
the absence of restraint. We cannot — so liberal opinion 
says — we cannot combine things which are essentially 
irreconcilable ; we cannot have efficient administration and 
personal liberty, and liberty is the best of the two. Ac- 
cording to this view, an ideal government would interfere 
in nothing. In an imperfect world we have to be contented 
with approximations, with a government which reduces 
its interference to a minimum. We are not to ask if there 
may not be a distinction of persons, — if the good may not 
have more liberty than the bad, — if the cheating shop- 
keeper, for instance, is to be allowed the same freedom in 
his calling as the honest tradesman. It is replied that 
distinctions of this kind have been tried, but that they 
create more evils than they cure. The best condition of 
things is where all alike have a fair stage and no favor, 
where every man is permitted to order his life as he pleases, 
so that he abstains from breaking the criminal law, and 
where the laws which it shall be criminal to break are as 
few and as mild as the safety of society will allow. A 
thousand duties may lie beyond the boundaries inclosed by 
legal penalties, but it is assumed that the interest of every 
man lies in the long run on the side of right, that it will 
answer better to him to be industrious than idle, honest 
than dishonest, temperate than vicious. Let every man 
pursue his private advantage with all the faculties that 
belong to him, and nature and comjDetition will take care 
of the rest. The State is thus cleared of responsibilities 
which it cannot adequately discharge. There is an infinite 
saving of trouble. The enterprising and the able are stim- 
ulated to energy by the prospect of certain reward, and 
every one finds and takes the position in life to which his 
exertions entitle him and the gifts which he has brought 
with him into the world. The prudent and the industrious 
succeed ; the worthless and the profligate reap as they 
have sown, and natural justice is fairly distributed to all. 



Reeiprocal Duties of State and Subject. 219 

Thus the sweeping-brush has been applied to the statute- 
book, and the complicated provisions established by our 
ancestors for our minds and bodies have been either cleared 
away or at least neutralized by the absence of machinery 
to make them effective. It used to be held that the State 
must profess a religion. It was the magistrate's business 
to execute justice and maintain truth. The State now 
recognizes that it represents a number of persons of differ- 
ent opinions in these matters, and therefore the Irish 
Church is disestablished, and the Anglican prelates are 
setting their houses in order. Proj)erty in land, once 
peculiarly the object of legislative supervision, is left to 
economic law. The parliaments of the Tudors, considering 
in their way the greatest happiness of the greatest number, 
charged themselves with the distribution of the produce of 
the soil. They encouraged the multiplication of yeomen 
and peasant ^proprietors. They attached four acres of land 
to every poor man's cottage. They prohibited the in- 
closures of commons and the agglomeration of farms ; and 
by reducing the power of landlords to do as they would 
with their own, they corrected the tendency which is now 
unresisted towards the absorption of the land in a diminish- 
insf number of hands. 

The modern theory is that the greater the interest of 
the landlord in his property the more he is encouraged to 
develojD the resources of it. The national wealth is in- 
creased by removing the restrictions which limited the 
landlord's ojDportunities of increasing his personal wealth. 
If peculiar circumstances are at this moment compelling 
legislation of a different kind in Ireland, it is adopted as a 
temporary expedient, a concession to the backward con- 
dition of the Irish people, which a few years of prosperity 
will render nugatory, and jDcrmit to be replaced by the 
natural system of contract. 

The attitude towards trade is precisely of the same kind. 
For several centuries Crown, Council, and Parliament 



220 Iteciprocal Duties of State and Subject. 

watched over every detail of commerce, from the village 
shop to the great transactions of the chartered companies. 
The development of industry was recognized as of an im- 
portance all but supreme ; but it was held subsidiary 
always to the moral welfare of the nation. To repress 
needless luxury, to prevent capitalists from making for- 
tunes at the cost of the poor, and to distribute in equitable 
proportions the profits of industry, were held to be func- 
tions of the State as completely as to repress burglary and 
murder. The State made mistakes. It maintained regu- 
lations which the circumstances of one age had rendered 
necessary not only when they had ceased to be useful, but 
when they had become contrivances for defeating the very 
object for which they had been originally instituted. Root 
and branch these regulations have now been cleared away. 
Small remnants of them survive as means of revenue, but 
each year sees restrictive duties disappear, to be replaced 
by direct taxation. When government interferes with 
commerce on a large scale, it is to coerce weak nations like 
the Chinese into the open system, and to forbid them to 
close their ports, under pretense of morality, against the 
introduction of drugs with wliich it has become our interest 
to poison them. So with the manufacturer and the shop- 
keeper. Trade inspectors used to be appointed to examine 
the quality of manufactured articles brought to the docks 
for export. They were said to be bribed, or to be incapa- 
ble ; their interference acted as a premium upon smuggling 
— any way it embarrassed trade, and the inspection dwin- 
dled to a name. The wardens and officers of the great 
companies appraised the value of what was sold in shops. 
Ideas of justice and equity determined prices. Morality, 
real or imagined, insisted that every article offered for sale 
was to be the thing which it pretended to be. Bread was 
to be real bread, and beer the genuine produce of malt and 
hops. A pound should be a true pound, an ounce a true 
ounce, the gallon and the quart not shrunk below their 



Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject. 221 

legitimate dimensions by false bottoms. The old English 
application of the order for good measure running over 
lingers yet, though no Iqnger to the benefit of the customer, 
in the extra pounds flung in to make the hundred weight. 
Such customs and such interferences were found either to 
work unwholesomely in themselves, or to be impossible to 
carry out with tolerable impartiality in the enormous com- 
plications .of modern commercial life. Luxury, no longer 
deprecated as an evil, is encouraged as a stimulus to labor. 
The State has\no creed. The State is no longer the 
guardian of morality. It is bound to the conscientious 
execution of its own functions, but what those functions 
are is more than ever uncertain. Personal morality is the 
affair of the individual soul. The increase of drunkenness 
is deplored as a national misfortune, but the only remedy 
for it is held to lie in personal self-restraint. Men cannot, 
we are told, be made virtuous by Act of Parliament. The 
natural punishment is misery, and if the misery fall on the 
innocent wife and children it cannot be helped. The wife 
must be more careful where she marries. The sale of 
liquors is as legitimate as any other trade. If the liquor 
sold is poisoned, the buyer must transfer his custom else- 
where, or abandon his evil habits. A public-house is a 
place of recreation, like a club. The law knows no dis- 
tinction of persons. It may not curtail the pleasures of 
the poor, and leave untouched the pleasures of the rich. 
In all trades, drink trade, bread trade, trade in necessaries, 
and trade in luxuries, the buyer is " his own keeper." If 
he is cheated he must improve his mind, and learn what he 
is doing. He is paying the price of knowledge, which, 
when gained, will make him a wiser man. 

Once more. The paternal theory implied that every 
English child was under the guardianship of the State. 
The law, however ill it was carried out, allowed no wan- 
dering outcasts, growing up to lie and steal because they 
had no means of maintaining themselves honestly. The 



222 Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject. 

emancipated street Arab of modern times was apprenticed 
either to farmer, shopkeeper, or artisan, according to his 
capacity, and those who could not find masters for them- 
selves were allotted by the machinery of the parochial 
system. Every other Sunday, or once a month, the clerk, 
at the close of the sermon, summoned the parishioners to 
the vestry. The fathers and grandfathers of the present 
generation assembled, with the rector in the chair. The 
case of any orphan or otherwise helpjess child was men- 
tioned, his condition inquired into, the means of his parents 
(if he had any), whether he was robust or lame or weak 
or stupid or promising ; and, according to the answer, he 
was assigned to this or that farmer, cobbler, tailor, carpen- 
ter, or mason, to be clothed, fed, and brought up in indus- 
try. The arrangements for the labor of grown men have 
been disorganized from a far earlier date ; but under the 
old constitution their wages were fixed by statute and ad- 
justed to the price of food, and no able-bodied laborer was 
allowed to be idle. The masterless rogue found straying 
without occupation was taken before the nearest magistrate 
and set to labor on the roads, or passed back to the parish 
to which he belonged. The incorrigible vagabond was 
sent to gaol and whipped ; forced labor was found for him 
as long as the condition of England made it possible : later 
on, he was shipped to the colonies. In a rude way the 
State endeavored, and always recognized its obligation to 
provide an opportunity for every man to earn an honest 
subsistence. 

This too has passed away. The able-bodied pauper now 
presents himself as ready to work, but no work can be 
found for him. At present, he is not permitted to starve : 
a bare subsistence is furnished for him at the exj^ense of 
the community ; but how long this will continue — still 
more how long it is desirable that this shall continue — 
may reasonably be doubted. If there are more hands 
than there is work for at home, there is more work than 



Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject. 223 

hands to do it elsewhere : and it may be cheaper as well as 
otherwise better to effect a combination between the two. 

The state of things thus introduced among us has been 
called anarchy plus the policeman. In the jDrimitive 
anarchy there is no law but that of strength and courage. 
Big bones and large muscles rule, the weak go to the wall. 
In the modern anarchy the superiority is with cleverness 
and energy. Open violence is not permitted. Cleverness 
of wit is master now, as strength of body was master then. 
Of morality there is equally little in both. The time has 
passed away in which there was an attempt to regulate the 
rewards and punishments of life by principles of justice. 
The preamble of a Tudor statute used to speak with rev- 
erence, real or pretended, of the law of God. The law of 
God is a thing with which modern politicians now disclaim 
a concern. If it exist at all, it is left to enforce its own 
penalties when broken. Crime is not punished as an 
offense against God, but as prejudicial to society. Towards 
crime there is an increasing leniency — a disposition to 
meddle with it to the smallest possible degree — and trea- 
son, once the darkest of offenses, is becoming a word with- 
out meaning. 

The theory is carried resolutely out. The Irish agrarian 
assassin is but protecting his private interests in a rude 
way, and is not too closely looked after ; an Irish riot, or a 
gathering of Fenians for drill, is an assembly of misguided, 
but well-meaning politicians. An Irish magistrate, espe- 
cially if he has the misfortune to be a Protestant, knows 
w^ell that if he is too zealous in keeping the peace, and an 
accident happens in the process, the cry will be to hang not 
the rioters but him. If he is to find favor with the au- 
thorities, his road to it lies in looking through his fingers. 
A similar tenderness is creeping uj) towards murderers and 
rogues of all kinds. Murder is explained by physical ten- 
dencies towards homicide. An eminent foreigner, smarting 
from painful experience, said to me the other day that 



224 Reciprocal Duties of State and Suhject. 

burglary was the only well-organized institution which 
England possessed. Armies of professional burglars are 
perfectly well known to the police — men who make no 
pretense of having other means of livelihood — yet the 
police may not meddle with them till they are caught red- 
handed ; and recently — it is said that things are mended 
now — penal servitude was an agreeable exchange for a 
life of ordinary labor. The work was less, the lodging 
better, the food more abundant and more secure. 

To commercial fraud, even where of a kind still within 
the admitted province of the criminal law, we are yet more 
tender. Thousands of families may be temjDted into ruin 
by the insincere prospectus of some fair-promising city 
company. The directors play the safest of games. If 
they win they stand to become millionaires ; if they fail 
they lose nothing, for in many instances they have nothing 
to lose; and when the crash comes they have the sus- 
picious sympathy of the great houses that surround them. 
Should they be forced into a court of justice they are 
secure of a favorable construction of their most doubtful 
actions, and the wretched shareholder who prosecutes is 
rebuked for his revengeful feelings, and recommended 
cynically to become more cautious for the future. 

So far has laissez-faire been carried, that no prudent man 
will now venture a walk in the London streets unless his 
will is made, his affairs in order, and a card-case is in his 
pocket, that his body may be identified. Three hundred 
people are killed annually in London by cabs and carts, 
and four times as many are wounded, yet no adequate 
precautions are taken, and no punishment follows. The 
chief delinquents are tradesmen's boys, whose advance in 
life depends on the rapidity with which they execute their 
commissions. The juries who sit on the inquests are 
tradesmen who keep carts themselves, and a verdict of 
accidental death recurs with unerring uniformity. This 
is a small matter to all but the unfortunate creatures who 



Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject. 225 

are rim over, and as in many cases they are paupers em- 
ployed in street-sweeping, no great interest is likely to be 
felt in their ftite. They are pensioners of the public, and 
a fortiori cannot claim to be looked after. It is, however, 
unhappily but one of a hundred instances of the universal 
indifference of the authorities, and, in one way or another, 
we all of us have our share in the common suflferinof. 
That we are not neglected entirely, we know from the 
periodic visits of the tax-collector and the rate-collector. 
Other evidences that we are still the State's children we 
are told that we are not to expect. We have grown to 
manhood with the progress of liberty ; we must now walk 
alone, and if we slip and tumble we have no one to blame 
but ourselves. 

The effects of the disintegrating theory are equally 
visible in the position of England as a member of the 
European community of nations. The several Powers 
once formed a general confederacy, held together on 
general principles, and bound to one another by general 
obligations. We are sliding out of our position, and no 
longer aspire to a voice in European councils. The nation 
is but a collection of individuals. Each individual is sup- 
posed to be occupied with his private concerns ; and the 
aggregate of us are only interested in being let alone. 
We have in consequence no longer a foreign policy. The 
balance of power has ceased to trouble us. We have paid 
dear for our meddling in past times; and eight hundred 
millions of national debt are an unpleasant and enduring 
reminder of our want of wisdom ; we have bought our 
experience, and do not mean to repeat our fault. Dynasties 
may change, frontiers shift, insurgent nationalities rise in 
arms for independence, and succeed or fail. AYe look on 
with a certain degree of interest ; sympathy or sentiment 
inclines us to one party or the other, but we do not mean 
to burn our fingers ; we shut ourselves up in our own 
island, and look on as upon a scene in a play. We enter 
15 



226 Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject, 

into no more Continental obligations, and we hope devoutly 
that no claims will be made upon us in the name of any 
which we have inherited. When occasion rises, as it rose 
in Denmark, we find a loophole of escape. The weight of 
English opinion abroad passes now for nothing, for it is 
known that it will be unsuj^ported by force ; and France 
and Germany and Russia arrange their differences among 
themselves as if Great Britain had ceased to exist. Were 
other consequences of our present tendencies equally inno- 
cent there would be little to regret. We do not look back 
even on the Crimean War with very enthusiastic self-satis- 
faction. We have nothing to gain from interfering further 
in European disputes, and we do wisely to keep clear of 
them. But the fact is as I have described. Our trade is 
still of consequence to Europe. The exports and imports 
of individual firms go on merrily as ever, or perhaps 
will, in the better times which are expected to return. As 
a nation we are nothing ; we are neither loved nor feared ; 
we are for the present useful, and we are content to remain 
so, and to pass current on these innocent terms. 

But we pursue this neutral and negative policy, not only 
towards other nations, but towards our own colonies. 
Time was when we believed that our prosperity depended 
on our power. The maintenance of our commerce was 
held to be connected with the respect felt for the weight 
of our arm, and therefore we established English-speaking 
communities at convenient places all over the world — as 
stations for our fleets and troops, as nurseries for fresh off- 
shoots of our people, as providing us with territory on 
which to expand, and as special markets for our manufac- 
tures which would be always open to us. We have 
changed all that ; we prefer to rely on the natural demand 
for our productions. The colonies cost us money, and 
every tax is a burden upon trade. We tell our peoj)le at 
home that every one must take care of himself; we say to 
the colonies — the Colonial Office has said so consistently 



Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject. 227 

for the last five and twenty years — " You are collections 
of individuals who left England for your private conven- 
ience ; you went to Australia, to New Zealand, to Canada to 
better your own condition. Better it by all means if you 
can, but you must do as we do at home, and rely upon 
yourselves only. You say you are loyal to England. We 
make no objection to your remaining so if you prefer it, 
but we do not tax you, and you must not tax us. You are 
independent, and the sooner you will declare yourselves in 
name the free- nations which we have virtually made you, 
the better it will be for all parties." When the colonies 
hesitate to take us at our word we are impatient. When 
they speak of us as the mother country we repudiate the 
name. We are impatient especially of the reluctance of 
Canada to part with us, for Canada we regard as a temjDta- 
tion to America to quarrel with us. Were we clear of 
Canada, we imagine that war with America would be im- 
possible, while so long as it continues a part of the emjDire 
and is willing to share in its own defense we feel that we 
cannot honorably throw it over. When I speak of " we " 
I do not mean that I have been describing the sentiment 
of the great body of the English people. I have been 
describing rather the phase of Liberal opinion which at 
present has the direction of our affairs, and expresses itself 
in the leading columns of the principal Liberal journals. 
I mean the opinion on colonial matters which is the exact 
counterpart of the peculiar policy which is exhibiting itself 
on all sides in the administration of the commonwealth. 

In every department the same principle is at work ; the 
one uniform object is to reduce the functions of govern- 
ment as near to nothing as ingenuity can bring them, or 
as circumstances will allow ; to leave every one to make 
his own fortune or to mar it by the light of his own in- 
genuity. We admit that government must keep the peace. 
We expect it, with the help of volunteers, to protect the 
country from invasion. These duties it cannot disown, 



228 Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject. 

without destroying all reason for its own existence ; but it 
is extremely unwilling to admit that it possesses others. It 
is a policy which cannot as yet be carried out completely. 
There is the Irish land question, and there is also the 
demand for national education. The present legislation for 
Ireland, however, is intended, as I said, to be exceptional 
and temporary; the second is being forced upon the 
government equally against the grain by the clamors of 
the people. Elsewhere education is recognized universally 
as the business of the State. In England it is considered 
the business of the j^arents, and only because parents unac- 
countably neglect their duty, the State is compelled to take 
it up. The recognition of such a fact as this may perhaps 
be an indication of a turn of the tide. If all mankind 
understood the full circle of their obligations, and dis- 
charged them of their own accord, there would then be 
really no need of governments, and the whole race would 
relapse into the primitive blessedness of Paradise. The 
selfishness and wickedness of individuals alone render 
authority necessary. Neglect in one instance is no more 
an occasion for interference than neglect in another, and it 
may be that the opinion is changing, that authority is about 
to reclaim some other portions of its old domain, which, to 
use the expressive phrase of the Irish, " have gone back to 
bog." For the present, however, the exception is made 
only in the case of children, who, on the face of it, cannot 
help themselves. When they have mastered their three 
R's, and can earn their living, they too will be turned 
adrift like the young nestlings who have learnt the use of 
their wings and beaks. 

Well, then, what effect is likely to be produced on the 
individuals who compose an empire administered on these 
principles ? The future was never less transparent than it 
is at present. We are on the brink, possibly, of a new 
order of things. Nationalities may be about to disappear. 
A time may be coming when there will be no more Eng- 



Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject. 229 

lish, French, Germans, Americans, but only men and 
women, individuals with their private interests scattered 
over the globe. As yet, however, outside England there 
are no symj^toms of the apjDroach of any such consumma- 
tion. Other nations are as self-asserting, ambitious, ag- 
gressive, imperial as ever ; and if England has any rivalry 
with them, if England aspires to remain a leading political 
Power, it may turn out premature to carry out too log- 
ically a theory so far peculiar to this island. The State no 
longer acknowledges what were once considered its duties. 
Are the duties of the subject diminished correspondingly ? 
Is there any longer a reason why an Englishman should 
wish to remain an Englishman if he can better his condi- 
tion by going elsewhere ? Liberal opinion answers frankly 
that there is none. The Scot of the Border before the 
union of the crowns might have bettered his condition 
considerably by taking service with a farmer in Yorkshire. 
He preferred a dog's life in the Cheviots to beef and bacon 
with his " auld enemy." The modern English working 
man is told that if he can earn an extra sixpence a day in 
the United States it is childish and useless to regret that he 
should change his nationality ; it is his interest to go to the 
United States, and he ought to go there. 

Let us carry out this theory to its consequences. What- 
ever may be the case hereafter, it will not be seriously 
pretended that war is as yet impossible. A long, persistent, 
and universal devotion to self-interest — interest meaning 
money-making — may convert us at last to the views of the 
Peace Society. We remember the boy at school who cal- 
culated that an occasional kick hurt him less than a pitched 
battle, and acted accordingly. English capitalists may come 
to consider that a dishonorable peace will be less expensive 
than the shortest war, and will humbly turn their cheek to 
the smiter. But we are not yet at that stage of progress. 
No English statesman would be allowed, if he wished it, to 
accept an ignominious alternative ; and should things ac- 



I 



230 Reciprocal Duties of State a?id Subject 

cidentally come to that, how will it then go with us ? War 
is costly. The sacrifices which it involves must be large, 
and may be ruinous. We have borne such sacrifices in 
23ast times, not with patience only, but with enthusiasm. 
Will the people generally be inclined to bear them again ? 
We do not count upon the loyalty of the colonies ; we 
would rather see them declare themselves neutral, and re- 
lieve us of the trouble of defending them. They have still 
probably sufficient English feeling to cling to our fortunes. 
They have learnt the new ideas imperfectly and unwillingly, 
and may prefer to take their chance with us for good or evil. 
At any rate, however, we expect nothing from them ; we 
disclaim concern in them, and we do not ask them to concern 
themselves for us. But at home ? Why at home should 
there be any mighty effort to maintain a nationality which 
no Ion O'er believes in itself — which declares itself to be 
nothing more than a congregation of so many millions, la- 
boring each for nothing but to grow rich ; the few succeed- 
ing, the many, as it always must be, climbing a slippery 
hill-side, and sliding continually to the bottom ? Why 
should those millions pay increased taxes ? Why should 
they even fight ? — for what could conquest take from the 
mass of them which they care to lose ? Freedom they can 
find in America by simply going there ; and if interest is 
to take them there in peace, why may they not go there to 
avoid the sufferings of war ? why not — except for those 
traditional ideas of honor and national pride which are 
called in scorn sentimental ? 

Interest to a sensible man is the measure of his national 
obligations ! Well, then, to put an extreme case : Sup- 
pose a hundred and fifty thousand French encamped round 
London ; what interest have the English field-laborers, me- 
chanics, and artisans in risking their lives to drive them 
away ? We refuse, when they are in want, to make an 
effort to preserve them to our own flag by sending them 
to our colonies ; we point to the United States as their nat- 



Reciprocal Duties of State and Suhje^^t. 231 

m*al refuge. What stake have they in the EDglish Empire 
that they should fight for it ? Is it said that so long as they 
remain in it England is their home ? Men will fight for 
their home when it is something which they cannot take 
away with them, when it is a substance that is more than a 
name, and carries associations with it which have a hold on 
their affections. But what value, substantial or sentimental, 
is there to a man in a single room in an alley in London or 
Manchester, without a yard of English soil owned or ten- 
anted by himself or any one belonging to him ; where he is 
uncared for, save for the work that can be got out of him, 
with foul air to breathe, foul water to drink, adulterated 
bread to eat,^ and for his sole amusement the drink-shop at 
the corner, where he is jDoisoned with drugged beer or the 
oil of vitriol which gives fervor to his gin ? The working 
man has no property but his skill, which he can carry with 
him, and which will secure him wages wherever he likes to 
go. Why should he endure inconvenience or danger or in- 
creased taxation for a country which does nothing for him, 
and in which he has nothing to lose ? He has been taught 
that his sole business is to raise himself in life. His own 
interest is no longer in any sense whatever the interest of 
his country. What is his country to him ? Should extrem- 
ity come upon us, we should have to fall back on the old- 
world ideas of duty, and honor, and patriotism — and duty 
on one side involves duty on the other. The State cannot 
demand allegiance in time of danger, when it is loudly in- 
different to it in prosj)erity. Or if nations are to be held 
together for the future by interest, there must be a commu- 
nity of interest to all. All must gain and all must lose to- 
gether. There is no maintaining a one-sided bargain. We 
must not have the parks and pheasant preserves growing on 
one side, and the hovel and the garret remaining unchanged 
on the other. Those who have nothing to lose which de- 

1 Mr. Bright talks of a free breakfast-table ; he says nothing of a pure 
breakfast-table. 



2-32, Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject. 

feat can take from them, and to whom success will bring no 
advantage, will be simple fools if they risk their skins for 
the sake of the rich who alone have any stake in the i;esult. 
If all interests are indeed personal, if the beginning and the 
end of each man's business is to better his own condition, 
the attractive forces which bind together the constituents of 
society become repellent forces, and for a bar of steel we 
have a dust-heap of atoms. 

As little can interest be depended on as an adequate in- 
centive to justice and honesty. It may be true, that in the 
long run the honest man succeeds better than the dishonest, 
but there must be a correct idea to begin with of what suc- 
cess means, and a longer run than society can afford for the 
issue to be visibly decided. The lesson itself after all is 
never learnt by the community. The individual rogue is 
only convinced when he has found the truth of it in his own 
person. It is by no means the good man at any time who 
will make most money in this world. In the first place, the 
good man will never care exclusively for making money ; 
in the next, he will be infallibly beaten by the selfish, 
shrewd, unscrupulous man, who, without breaking any writ- 
ten law, will take advantage of any opportunity which may 
offer itself — on the broad margin of undefined obligation, 
where law is silent, and only morality has a voice. Where 
money is the measure of worth the wrong persons are 
always uppermost. Unrestricted competition is held a se- 
curity for j)robity in trade. The fair dealer, it is said, who 
provides good articles at reasonable prices, will beat the 
rogue who sells soft iron for steel, and hemp for silk, and 
colored cider for port wine, and colored water for milk, and 
cocoanut oil and lard for butter, and shoddy for woolen 
cloth. The sober banker who is contented with moderate 
profits, draws away the business at last from the speculator 
who tempts customers by high interest, pays for it for a few 
years out of capital, and bolts and leaves them ruined. It 
may be so. But society has suffered meanwhile from un- 



Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject. 233 

detected or unpunished villainy. The life of the honest 
laborer is a happier and a longer one than the life of the 
burglar and the pickpocket, but that is no reason why the 
burglar or the pickpocket should be left to prey upon us 
without interference. Short roads to fortune are so attrac- 
tive, the natural penalties fall so unequally, the chief scoun- 
drels so often escape altogether, while the comparatively 
innocent are left to suffer, that if we trust to the action of 
natural laws, there is no fear that the supply will fail of 
sharks and dog-fish to prey to the end upon the harmless 
members of the commonwealth. There is such a thinor as a 
trade reputation. A house of business, by a long course of 
honorable dealing, has secured a good name, and a good 
name is in itself a property, which a change of ownership, a 
more expensive habit of life, an intention of retiring from 
business, or setting up as a gentleman, may tempt the owner 
to realize. It is easily done. Inferior articles are substituted 
for the good. The profits increase. The name is not im- 
mediately forfeited ; money for a number of years pours 
in with accumulated speed. Ultimately the business is de- 
stroyed, but the rogue has cleared off with his plunder. 
The concern has lasted his time, and he cares nothing for 
what comes after him. He has bought an estate, he has 
lived in luxury with his powdered footmen, his hothouses 
and his seat in Parliament ; what is it to him ? 

A nation in the same way may realize its reputation. 
The excellence of its manufactures may have given it 
supremacy in the markets of the world. Competition may 
have been distanced, and trade driven into channels which 
cannot be immediately changed. Crowds of aspirants to 
fortune rush in to share the spoils. They underbid their 
rivals, and flood the markets with rubbish which the na- 
tion's fame is made available to float. The old houses are 
driven into the same courses to keep their place in the 
race. There is a period of " unexampled prosperity." 
Exports and imports rise ; there are congratulations on 



234 Reciprocal Duties of State and Suhjcct. 

the elasticity of the revenue and the infinite extensibility 
of commerce ; while all the time the foundations have been 
undermined, the reputation accumulated by centuries of 
honest work has been realized and squandered by a single 
generation. The nation has been but a heedless spend- 
thrift living upon his capital, and it can only recover its 
place by patiently, humbly, and i^ainfully going back to its 
old-fashioned ways. 

Whether the depression of trade so much complained of 
lately in England be due wholly or in part to a cause 
of this kind, outsiders can conjecture only from their own 
limited exi^erience, and from such accounts as reach them 
from consumers at home and abroad. We observe, how- 
ever, in the published reports, that while other branches 
of business are still suffering, the trade in shoddy never 
was more vigorous.^ 

Nature doubtless will apply her remedy. Dishonesty 
will prove as usual the worst policy, but if England has 
gone or shall go very far upon that bad road, the conse- 
quences so far as we are concerned may well be irreparable, 
and it will be small comfort if we serve only to point a 
moral in the world's future history. It will then be a 
question whether the fashionable contempt of our fathers 
has not been folly after all : whether the supervision and 
control which have been flung away as an interference with" 
natural liberty were not and are not as indispensable in 
transactions of commerce as in the prevention of violent 
forms of crime ; whether swindling after all is less mis- 
chievous than burglary or piracy ; whether the selfishness 
and folly of individuals do not require at all times and 
under all conditions to be held in hand by intelligence 
and probity. We talk of freedom. The old saw of the 
moralist is as true to-day as it was two thousand years 
ago. There is no real freedom except in obedience to the 
laws of the Maker of all things. Just laws are no restraint 
1 March, 1870. 



Reciprocal Duties of State aiid Subject. 235 

upon the freedom of the good, for the good man desires 
nothing which a just law will interfere with. He is as free 
under the law as without the law, and he is grateful for its 
guidance when want of knowledge might lead him wrong. 
Liberty to the bad man, we have yet to learn, is of any 
profit to him or to his neighbors. Against unjust laws, 
against unwise laws, against the self-interested obstructions 
of dishonest authority, or the stupid meddling of ignorant 
authority, it is necessary to protest, and in extremity to 
rebel ; but it has not yet been proved that because bad 
laws are mischievous, good laws are unattainable ; that the 
self-interests of all sons of Adam are to be left to jostle one 
against another, and that the result, by some wonderful 
arrangement, will turn out harmony. 

" I saw," says the Preacher, " that wisdom excelleth folly 
as far as light excelleth darkness. The wise man's eyes 
are in his head, but the fool walketh in darkness ; and I 
perceived that one event happeneth to them all. I said in 
my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth to 
me. Why then was I more wise ? " But the philosopher 
who was thus perplexed with the inscrutable mystery of 
the universe, and was driven " to hate life " by the con- 
fusion and misery around him, was a king who had believed 
in laissez-faire, who had left justice and righteousness to 
nature and economic laws. He sums up the catalogue of 
his achievements : " He had built him houses and vine- 
yards," "he had planted gardens and orchards and made 
pools of water," " he had got him servants and maidens and 
great possessions, and gold and silver, and all the delights 
of the sons of men." This was the grand outcome of all 
his labors ; and he wondered to find that it was " vanity." 
" That which was crooked could not be made straight," be- 
cause he had never tried to straighten it, and preferred to 
gaze on the evils which were done under the sun in elegant 
despondency. 

To bring these remarks to a conclusion. I regard the 



236 Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject. 

present constitution of government or no government in 
this country, not as the result of deliberate and wise fore- 
sight, not as an elaborate machine shaped into perfection 
by the successive efforts of political sagacity, but as a con- 
dition of things arising from causes historically traceable, 
very far removed from perfection, made possible only by 
peculiar external circumstances and no less inevitably 
transient. The House of Commons broke the power of the 
Crown. The House of Commons itself is composed of 
heterogeneous elements which, by degrees, have arranged 
themselves into two great sections, — the established fami- 
lies and those who aspire to be established, the country 
party and the town party, the agricultural party and the 
commercial party, with other lines of division parallel to 
these, and nearly coincident with them, the party of the 
past and the party of the future, those who believe in 
established usasje and those who believe in chancre and 
progress, opposing sentiments combined with opposing 
interests. The full development of these tendencies was 
long interfered with by tradition and inherited association. 
The English, like all great nations, are instinctively con- 
servative, and fear of change and novelty has been a drag 
upon the wheel. It is only since the masses were called to 
a share of the franchise, in the first Reform Bill, that the 
balance has been established in completeness, which is 
called government by party, and the responsibility of the 
virtual head of the State to the House of Commons, and 
the House of Commons alone. Like many other phe- 
nomena which have had their day in this world, it is 
attended by a philosophy which extols it as the most 
finished form of political organization. The result of it is 
the paralysis of authority, the limitation of statesmanship 
to the immediate necessities of the hour, and* the sur- 
rounding the Prime Minister with so many intricacies of 
situation that he lives in a strait-waistcoat, with handcuffs 
on his wrists and fetters on his ankles. Were he a Moses 



Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject. 237 

or a Lycurgiis, lie can do nothing without a majority at his 
back — a majority composed of men who are sent to Par- 
liament, not for their ability, not for their patriotism or their 
]3robity, but because they can be relied on to defend the 
interest which they are elected to represent. The minis- 
ter's first and last care is to avoid offending these persons. 
He must leave abuses untouched which he would not spare 
for an hour could he have his way, because this and that 
member of his party is interested in maintaining them. 
Every avenue of practical administration is obstructed. 
To get the slightest thing effectually done is made so 
difficult that any excuse is caught at for leaving it undone. 
The art of a statesman becomes the art of " how not to do 
it," and there is no wonder that, harassed and tormented, 
he listens greedily to and learns himself to repeat the 
phrases of the prevailing theory, and has but one answer to 
every petition, that those who wish anything to be done must 
do it for themselves. Drunkenness cannot be checked, 
because it is dangerous to offend the brewers and the pot- 
house-keepers, who have so large influence in the elections ; 
and those who are scandalized at the wreck and ruin which 
the drink trade is causing are treated to a lesson on moral 
self-restraint. Bakers who adulterate their bread must 
not be exposed and punished. The bakers, at the next 
dissolution, will vote as a class for the Opposition candi- 
date. In the same way all patronage, all offices of which 
governments have to dispose, all honors which they have 
to distribute, are similarly sacrificed to party, to rigging 
votes, and wire-pulling majorities. The competitive ex- 
amination system has been established in the lower 
branches of the public service, not as a thing good in itself 
— we shall believe that it is good in itself when merchants 
and bankers let the board of examiners choose their clerks 
for them — but as an expedient to rescue some parts of the 
service from jobbery, and to save ministers from the ne- 
cessity of offending their supporters, by refusing requests 



238 Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject. 

which they could not in ordinary honesty grant. The 
establishment of the system is only a confession that the 
possessors of patronage can no longer exercise it con- 
scientiously, while the popular voice sings its praises as a 
triumph of |)robity and sagacity. The fact and -the theory 
are made to harmonize. Government is inefficient. It 
changes so frequently that a minister is superseded before 
he comes to understand his work. He can lay down no 
principles, for they are liable to be immediately reversed ; 
but the object is that he should do nothing, and therefore 
it is well that he should be able to do nothing. A colonial 
policy is impossible, not because^ intelligent people do not 
believe that a closer union with the colonies is not in itself 
desirable, but because influential capitalists are interested 
in keeping down the labor market, and they know that 
such a union would be accompanied with a large and sus- 
tained emigration. 

Among the infinite resultants from such a condition of 
things one of the most obvious is the enormous waste of 
ability. It is tragical to think of such a mind as Mr. Glad- 
stone's being occupied incessantly with petty thoughts of 
how he can keep his party together. He must fawn and 
flatter and make himself common upon platforms, and 
give honor where honor is not due, and withhold it where 
he knows it ought to be bestowed. He stands in the front 
rank of the nation ; its seeming idol, yet the servant of 
those who clamor that he is the greatest living man ; yet 
little less helpless than the meanest of them to do what he 
knows that their welfare demands, and forced, when called 
on, to find reasons why such things are better left undone. 
He is bringing in measures for the improved government 
of Ireland. He is obliged to say that he expects good from 
them ; yet every one who understands Ireland is aware that 
there is but one possible end to the chronic disease of that 
unhappy country, without which if an angel brought a land 
law for it from heaven the symptoms would continue una- 



Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject. 239 

bated ; and that is a just, impartial, and stable administra- 
tion. So long as parties go in and out and governments 
live by majorities of votes, the Tory when he is in will court 
the Protestant land-owner, and the Liberal who wishes to 
oust him will fawn on the Catholic priest, and the wretched 
peasantry will be fevered with exciting promises, and fed on 
hopes which must be forever disappointed. 

When Lord Derby came last into otfice, and it was ru- 
mored that the ground was to be cut from under Mr. Glad- 
stone's feet by the introduction of a Reform Bill, I asked 
some one — I must not indicate him more closely — why the 
Tories did not keep to their own peculiar province ? Au- 
thority was everywhere falling to pieces ; why did not they 
say frankly they would try to check, for instance, the dis- 
honesty of trade, and that if the people wanted reform bills 
they must go to those who believed that reform would do 
them good ? My friend said that they would be immedi- 
ately thrown out. I agreed ; but I said they would return 
in a year or two, with every right-minded Englishman at 
their backs. My friend was being educated. He said it 
would never do. The Tories had been long out of power, 
and they wanted patronage. There were House of Com- 
mons supporters to be made peers, barristers to be made 
judges, parsons to be made deans and bishops, hungry hang- 
ers-on to be provided for, or their services could not be 
counted on for the future. They must blood the noses of 
their hounds. 

It was enough. The system of party government had 
demoralized both sections of the ruling classes with equal 
completeness. It was and is idle to hope that any good 
can come to us as a nation while our affairs are managed on 
the principle of blooding the hounds' noses, though it be 
construed by all the newspapers in England into the devel- 
opment of constitutional liberty. 

Constitutions are made for the country, and not the coun- 
try for constitutions. Lord Bacon imagined that knowl- 



240 Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject. 

edo-e could be so formularized as to become mechanical, and 
that the inequalities of natural ability would be leveled or 
neutralized. No symptoms of such a change are as yet vis- 
ible. The man of genius retains his supremacy in science. 
The intellect of a Stephenson or a Faraday remains a ruling 
power, which the world obeys and 23rospers in obeying. As 
little has society arrived, or can arrive, at a stage when the 
wisdom of the statesman is no longer needed for control and 
governance, where the sage and the blockhead, the knave 
and the honest man, can be trusted to rub on together 
with equal rights and equal liberties. In human things, 
as in all else, there is a right way in opposition to a wrong 
way, which only wisdom can discover, yet in the choice of 
which, or the rejection of which, success or failure depends ; 
and the laissez-faire philosophy is but a phase of opinion, 
a flattering interpretation of transient political phenomena, 
which could not survive a single spasm of severe national 
trial, which would vanish into air before a protracted war, or 
even before a chronic decay of trade, which might bring on 
us here in England a repetition of the Irish famine. 

The heart of the nation, however, is still sound as ever. 
The popular political theories are but as a scum uj:)on its 
surface, plausible formulas adapted to an accidental state 
of things, which are passed from mouth to mouth by multi- 
tudes who have never yet had occasion to think seriously, 
but which lie merely upon the lips, and have never pene- 
trated and never will penetrate into the hearts of such a peo- 
ple as the English. The English are an order-loving people, 
who detest anarchy in whatever shining dress it may pre- 
sent itself. They have power at last in their hands. They 
must learn to make a wise use of it, and discover means by 
which it can be made available to their real good, by giving 
permanence and stability to authority. It is admitted on all 
sides that the two parties which divide the country repre- 
sent each a form of thought which is the complement of the 
other. Her Majesty's Government is incomplete without 



Reciprocal Duties of State and Subject. 241 

her Majesty's Opposition. It may be difficult, but it cannot 
be impossible, to unite the energies which are now ex- 
hausted in neutralizing one another, and make available 
such political intelligence as we possess for tome more 
wholesome and enduring administration. The great inter- 
ests of the Empire must not and cannot remain at the 
mercy of parliamentary intrigues, or the transient gusts of 
popular opinion. It is true that there can be no such thing 
any more as fixity of tenure in high office. That arrange- 
ment the world has outgrown. But without fixity of ten- 
ure, without sacrifice of eventual responsibility, there might 
be a longer and more secure lease of power under which a 
far-sighted statesmanship might become again possible, and 
ministers might use their opportunities and their ability in 
the true interests of the country, without fear of being driven 
from their places by the passing gusts of interested or igno- 
rant impatience. 
16 



THE MERCHANT AND HIS WIFE. 

AN APOLOGUE FOR THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 



" My dear," said a distinguished merchant one day to his 
wife, " you cost me a great deal of money. Why do you 
not cultivate your own estates, and relieve me of the bur- 
den of you ? " 

The wife was a little hurt at so abrupt an address. Her 
property was magnificent, but she wanted help to develop 
its resources. She had often applied to her husband, and 
if he would have put his hand to the work, he might have 
become the wealthiest man in the world. But he sus- 
pected that after he had laid out his capital and labor she 
would run away from him, and he would have made a bad 
speculation. 

His suspicions were groundless. She was heartily at- 
tached to him, — not an idea of desertion had floated before 
her imagination for a moment. She exerted herself, how- 
ever, as he desired : she paid for her dresses, she j)aid for 
her carriage and her maid, she even took charge of such 
of his children as he could not himself provide for, and set 
them up for life. The merchant ought to have been satis- 
fied, but one morning he began again : — 

" My dear, you are now independent. I don't wish you 
to leave me, but if you have any such desire yourself, I 
shall not think of preventing you." 

." Leave you," she said, " leave you ! what are you talk- 
ing about ? What have I done to deserve that you should 
speak to me in this way ? " 



The Merchant and his Wife. 243 

" Don't misunderstand me," he replied. " I have ob- 
served great uuhappiness to arise from compulsory unions. 
I have taught you to depend upon yourself that you may be 
your own mistress ; you can now stand alone, and your 
future is in your hands, to go or stay." 

" Are you mad ? " she exclaimed ; " who talks of going ? 
Why " — and here her voice choked a little — " why should 
such a word be mentioned between you and me ? " 
• " My dear, don't be sentimental," he said. " The only 
sure bond between human creatures is mutual interest. 
As long as you consider it to be your interest to continue 
under this roof, I shall be delighted to see you here, and I 
think I am generous in allowing it. If I were alone, a 
smaller establishment would suffice for my wants. I could 
sell my house, dismiss the servants, live in chambers, and 
dine at the club." 

" My dear husband," she cried, " do not speak such 
dreadful words ! What family can hold together on such 
terms as these ? All I have, you well know, is yours ; and 
surely, with your genius for business and your means, my 
property — " 

" Don't talk to me of your property," he interrupted im- 
j)atiently, " I have many times told you that I will have 
nothing to do with it. Manage your matters your own 
way. Do what you like, or go where you will. I interfere 
with you in nothing ; one thing only you must not do, 
that is, ask me for money. I am not sending you away. 
I shall be sorry to lose you if you go, but the loss will be 
more yours than mine, and if you leave me, I shall en- 
deavor to bear it." 

It was long before the wife could believe him serious. 
Day after day, however, he repeated the same lesson — at 
breakfast and at dinner, before they went to sleep at night, 
and before they rose in the morning. A wise word, the 
merchant thought, could not be heard too often. 

At last he wearied her. She saw that he had no real 



244 The Merchant and his Wife. 

affection for her. She was a high-spirited, handsome 
woman, and her husband was the only person who seemed 
indifferent to her attractions. One day when he came 
home from business, he found she had taken him at his 
word, and had eloped with another man. 

He professed to be astonished. He declared that he 
had allowed her her way in everything, and he complained 
that she had been deeply ungrateful to him. A neighbor, 
however, to whom he appealed for sympathy, told him that 
he had been an infatuated ass. 



ON PROGRESS. 



Amidst the varied reflections which the nineteenth cen- 
tury is in the habit of making on its condition and its pros- 
pects, there is one common opinion in which all parties 
coincide — that we live in an era of progress. Earlier 
ages, however energetic in action, were retrospective in 
their sentiments. The contrast between a degenerate 
present and a glorious past was the theme alike of poets, 
moralists, and statesmen. When the troubled Israelite de- 
manded of the angel why the old times were better than 
the new, the angel admitted the fact while rebuking the 
curiosity of the questioner. "Ask not the cause," he 
answered. " Thou dost not inquire wisely concerning 
this." As the hero of Nestor's youth flung the stone with 
ease which twelve of the pigmy chiefs before Troy could 
scarcely lift from the ground, so " the wisdom of our an- 
cestors " was the received formula for ages with the Eng- 
lish politician. Problems were fairly deemed insoluble 
which had baffled his fathers, "who had more wit and 
wisdom than he." We now know better, or we imagine 
that we know better, what the past really was. We draw 
comparisons, but rather to encourage hope than to indulge 
despondency, or foster a deluding reverence for exploded 
errors. The order of the ages is inverted. Stone and iron 
came first. We ourselves may possibly be in the silver 
stage. An age of gold, if the terms of our existence on 
this planet permit the contemplation of it as a possibility, 
lies unrealized in the future. Our lights are before us, and 
all behind is shadow. In every department of life — in its 



246 On P7'ogress, 

business and in its pleasures, in its beliefs and in its theo- 
ries, in its material developments and in its spiritual con- 
victions — we thank God that we are not like our fathers. 
And while we admit their merits, making allowance for 
their disadvantages, we do not bind ourselves in mistaken 
modesty to our own immeasurable superiority. 

Changes analogous to those which we contemplate with 
so much satisfaction have been witnessed already in the 
history of other nations. The Roman in the time of the 
Antonines might have looked back with the same feelings 
on the last years of the Republic. The civil wars were at 
an end. From the Danube to the African deserts, from 
the Euphrates to the Irish Sea, the swords were beaten 
into ploughshares. The husbandman and the artisan, the 
manufacturer and the merchant, pursued their trades 
under the shelter of the eagles, secure from arbitrary vio- 
lence, and scarcely conscious of their master's rule. Order 
and law reigned throughout the civilized world. Science 
was making rapid strides. The philosophers of Alexandria 
had tabulated the movements of the stars, had ascertained 
the periods of the planets, and were anticipating by con- 
jecture the great discoveries of Copernicus. The mud 
cities of the old world were changed to marble. Greek 
art, Greek literature, Greek enlightenment, followed in the 
track of the legions. The harsher forms of slavery were 
modified. The bloody sacrifices of the Pagan creeds were 
suppressed by the law ; the coarser and more sensuous 
superstitions were superseded by a broader philosophy. 
The period between the accession of Trajan and the death 
of Marcus Aurelius has been selected by Gibbon as the 
time in which the human race had enjoyed more general 
happiness than they had ever known before, or had known 
since, up to the date when the historian was meditating 
on their fortunes. Yet during that very epoch, and in the 
midst of all that prosperity, the heart of the empire was 
dying out of it. The austere virtues of the ancient Romans 



On Progress. 247 

were perishing with their ftiiilts. Tlie principles, the habits, 
the convictions, which held society together were giving 
way, one after the other, before luxury and selfishness. 
The entire organization of the ancient world was on the 
point of collapsing into ii heap of incoherent sand. 

If the merit of human institutions is at all measured by 
their strength and stability, the increase of wealth, of pro- 
duction, of liberal sentiment, or even of knowledge, is not 
of itself a proof that we are advancing on the right road. 
The unanimity of the belief therefore that we are advanc- 
ing at present must be taken as a proof that we discern 
something else than this in the changes which we are un- 
dergoing. It would be well, however, if we could define 
more clearly what we precisely do discern. It woidd at 
once be a relief to the weaker brethren whose minds occa- 
sionally misgive them, and it would throw out into distinct- 
ness the convictions which we have at length arrived at on 
the true constituents of human worth, and the objects 
towards which human beings ought to direct their energies. 
We are satisfied that we are going forward. That is to be 
accepted as no longer needing proof. Let us ascertain or 
define in what particulars and in what direction we are 
going forward, and we shall then understand in what im- 
provement really consists. 

The question ought not to be a difficult one, for we have 
abundant and varied materials. The advance is not con- 
fined to ourselves. France, we have been told any time 
these twenty years, has been progressing enormously under 
the beneficent rule of Napoleon III. Lord Palmerston 
told us, as a justification of the Crimean War, that Turkey 
had made more progress in the two preceding generations 
than any country in the world. From these instances we 
might infer that Progress was something mystic and in- 
visible, like the operation of the graces said to be conferred 
in baptism. The distinct idea which was present in Lord 
Palmerston's mind is difficult to discover. In the hope 



248 On Progress. 

that some enlightened person will clear up an obscurity 
which exists only perhaps in our own want of perception, 
I proceed to mention some other instances in which, while 
I recognize change, I am unable to catch the point of view 
from which to regard it with unmixed satisfaction. Rous- 
seau maintained that the primitive state of man was the 
happiest, that civilization was corruption, and that human 
nature deteriorated with the complication of the conditions 
of its existence. A paradox of that kind may be defended 
as an entertaining speculation. I am not concerned with 
any such barren generalities. Accepting social organiza- 
tion as the school of all that is best in us, I look merely 
to the alterations which it is undergoing ; and if in some 
things passing away it seems to me that we are lightly 
losing what we shall miss when they are gone and cannot 
easily replace, I shall learn gladly that I am only suffering 
under the proverbial infirmity of increasing years, and that, 
like Esdras, I perplex myself to no purpose. 

Let me lightly, then, run over a list of subjects on which 
the believer in progress will meet me to most advantage. 

I. 

I will begin with the condition of the agricultural poor, 
the relation of the laborer to the soil, and his means of sub- 
sistence. 

The country squire of the last century, whether he was a 
Squire Western or a Squire Allworthy, resided for the 
greater part of his life in the parish where he was born. 
The number of freeholders was four times what it is at 
present ; plurality of estates was the exceiJtion ; the owner 
of land, like the peasant, was virtually ascriptus glehce — a 
practical reality in the middle of the property committed to 
him. His habits, if he was vicious, were coarse and brutal 
— if he was a rational being, were liberal and temperate ; 
but in either case the luxuries of modern generations were 
things unknown to him. His furniture was massive and 



On Progress. 249 

enduring. His household expenditure, abundant in quan- 
tity, provided nothing of the costly delicacies which it is 
now said that every one expects and every one therefore feels 
bound to provide. His son at Christchurch was contented 
with half the allowance which a youth with expectations 
now holds to be the least on which he can live like a 
gentleman. His servants were brought up in the family 
as apprentices, and spent their lives under the same roof. 
His wife and his daughters made their own dresses, darned 
their own stockings, and hemmed their own handkerchiefs. 
The milliner was an unknown entity at houses where the 
milliner's bill has become the unvarying and not the most 
agreeable element of Christmas. A silk gown lasted a life- 
time, and the change in fashions was counted rather by gen- 
erations than by seasons. A London house was unthought 
of — a family trip to the Continent as unimaginable as an 
outing to the moon. If the annual migration was some- 
thing farther than, as in Mr. Primrose's parsonage, fi-om the 
blue room to the brown, it was limited to the few weeks at 
the county town. Enjoyments were less varied and less 
expensive. Home was a word with a real meaning. Home 
occupations, home pleasures, home associations and relation- 
ships filled up the round of existence. Nothing else was 
looked for, because nothing else was attainable. Among 
other consequences, habits were far less expensive. The 
squire's income was small as measured by modern ideas. 
If he was self-indulgent, it was in pleasures which lay at his 
own door, and his wealth was distributed among those who 
were born dependent on him. Every fomily on the estate 
was known in its particulars, and had claims for considera- 
tion which the better sort of gentlemen were willing to rec- 
ognize. If the poor were neglected, their means of taking 
care of themselves were immeasurably greater than at pres- 
ent. The average squire may have been morally no better 
than his great-grandson. In many respects he was proba- 
bly worse. He was ignorant, he drank hard, his language 



250 On Progress. 

was uot particularly refined, but his private character was 
comparatively unimportant ; he was controlled in his deal- 
ings with his people by the traditionary English habits 
which had held society together for centuries — habits 
which, though long gradually decaying, have melted en- 
tirely away only within living memories. 

At the end of the sixteenth century an Act passed oblig- 
ing the landlord to attach four acres of land to every cot- 
tage on his estate. The Act itself was an indication that 
the tide was on the turn. The English villein, like the serf 
all over Europe, had originally rights in the soil, . which 
were only gradunlly stolen from him. The statute of Eliza- 
beth was a compromise reserving so much of the old privi- 
leges as appeared indispensable for a healthy life. 

The four acres shriveled like what had gone before ; but 
generations had to pass before they had dwindled to noth- 
inof, and the laborer was inclosed between his four walls to 
live upon his daily wages. 

Similarly, in most country ]3arishes there were tracts of 
common land, where every householder could have his flock 
of sheep, his cow or two, his geese or his pig ; and milk 
and bacon so produced went into the limbs of his children, 
and went to form the large English bone and sinew which 
are now becoming things of tradition. The thicket or the 
peat bog provided fuel. There were spots where the soil 
was fiivorable in which it was broken up for tillage, and the 
poor families in rotation raised a scanty crop there. It is 
true that the common land was wretchedly cultivated. 
What is every one's property is no one's property. The 
swamps were left undrained, the gorse was not stubbed up. 
The ground that was used for husbandry was racked. An 
inclosed common taken in hand by a man of capital pro- 
duces four, five, or six times what it jDroduced before. But 
the landlord who enters on possession is the only gainer by 
the change. The cottagers made little out of it, but they 
made somethinir. and that somethinof to them was the differ- 



On Progress. 251 

ence between comfort and penury. The inclosed land re- 
quired some small additional labor. A family or two was 
added to the population on the estate, but it was a family 
living at the lower level to which all had been reduced. 
The landlord's rent roll shows a higher figure, or it may be 
he has only an additional 23heasant preserve. The laboring 
poor have lost the fagot on their hearths, the milk for their 
children, the slice of meat at their own dinners. 

Even the appropriation of the commons has not been 
sufficient without closer paring. When the commons went, 
there was still the liberal margin of grass on either side 
of the parish roads, to give pickings to the hobbled sheep 
or donkey. The landlord, with the right of the strong, 
which no custom can resist, is now moving forward his 
fences, taking possession of these ribbons of green, and 
growing solid crops upon them. The land is turned to 
better purpose. The national wealth in some inappreciable 
way is supposed to have increased, but the only visible 
benefit is to the lord of the soil, and appears in some added 
splendor to the furniture of his drawing-room. 

It is said that men are much richer than they were, that 
luxury is its natural consequence, and is directly beneficial 
to the community as creating fresh occupations and employ- 
ing more labor. The relative produce of human industry, 
however, has not materially increased in proportion to the 
growth of population. " If riches increase, they are in- 
creased that eat them." If all the wealth which is now 
created in this country was distributed among the workers 
in the old ratio, the margin which could be spent upon per- 
sonal self-indulgence would not be very much larger than it 
used to be. The economists insist that the growth of arti- 
ficial wants among the few is one of the symptoms of civil- 
ization — is a means provided by nature to spread abroad 
the superfluities of the great. If the same labor, however, 
which is now expended in the decorating and furnishing a 
Belgravian palace was laid out upon the cottages on the 



252 On Progress, 

estates of its owner, an equal number of workmen would 
find employment, an equal fraction of the landlord's income 
would be divided in wages. For the economist's own pur- 
pose, the luxury could be dispensed with if the landlord 
took a different view of the nature of his obligations. 
Progress and civilization conceal the existence of his obliga- 
tions, and destroy at the same time the old-fashioned cus- 
toms which limited the sphere of his free will. The great 
estates have swallowed the small. The fat ears of corn 
have eaten up the lean. The same owner holds properties 
in a dozen counties. He cannot reside upon them all, or 
make personal acquaintance with his multiplied dependants. 
He has several country residences. He lives in London 
half the year, and most of the rest upon the Continent. 
Inevitably he comes to regard his land as an investment ; 
his duty to it the development of its producing powers ; the 
receipt of his rents the essence of the connection ; and his 
personal interest in it the sport which it will provide for 
himself and his friends. Modern landlords tell us that if 
the game laws are abolished, they will have lost the last 
temptation to visit their country seats. If this is their view 
of the matter, the sooner they sell their estates and pass 
them over to others, to whom life has not yet ceased to be 
serious, the better it will -be for the community. They 
complain of the growth of democracy and insubordination. 
The fault is wholly in themselves. They have lost the 
respect of the peoj)le because they have ceased to deserve it. 

II. 

If it be deemed a paradox to maintain that the relation 
between the owners of land and the peasantry was more 
satisfactory in the old days than in the present, additional 
hardiness is required to assert that there has been no 
marked improvement in the clergy. The bishop, rector, 
or vicar of the Established Church in the eighteenth cen- 
tury is a by-word in English ecclesiastical history. The 



On Progress, 253 

exceptional distinction of a Warbiirton or a Wilson, a 
Butler or a Berkeley, points the contrast only more vividly 
with the worldliness of their brothers on the bench. The 
road to honors was through political subserviency. The 
prelates indemnified themselves for their ignominy by the 
abuse of their patronage, and nepotism and simony were 
too common to be a reproach. Such at least is the modem 
concef)tion of these high dignitaries, which instances can be 
found to justify. In an age less inflated with self-esteem, 
the nobler specimens would have been taken for the rule, 
the meaner and baser for the exception. Enough, how- 
ever, can be ascertained to justify the enemies of the 
Church in drawing an ugly picture of the condition of the 
hierarchy. Of the parochial clergy of those times the 
popular notion is probably derived from Fielding's novels. 
Parson Trulliber is a ruffian who would scarcely find ad- 
mittance into a third-rate farmers' club of the present day. 
Parson Adams, a low life Don Quixote, retains our esteem 
for his character at the expense of contempt for his under- 
standing. The best of them appear as hangers-on of the 
great, admitted to a precarious equality in the house- 
keeper's room, their social position being something lower 
than that of the nursery governess in the establishment of 
a vulgar millionaire. 

That such specimens as these were to be found in Eng- 
land in the last century is no less certain than that in some 
parts of the country the type may be found still surviving. 
That they were as much exceptions we take to be equally 
clear. Those who go for information to novels may re- 
member that there was a Yorick as well as a Phutatorius 
or a Gastripheres. Then, more than now, the cadets of 
the great houses were promoted, as a matter of course, to 
the family livings, and were at least gentlemen. Sydney 
Smith's great prizes of the Church were as much an object 
of ambition to men of birth as the high places in the other 
professions ; and between pluralities and sinecures, cathe- 



254 On Progress. 

dral jDrebendaries, and the fortunate possessors of two or 
more of the larger benefices, held their own in society with 
the county families, and lived on equal terms with them. 
If in some places there was spiritual deadness and slovenli- 
ness, in others there was energy and seriousness. Clarissa 
Harlowe found daily service in the London churches as 
easily as she could find it now. 

That the average character of the country clergy, how- 
ever, was signally different from what it is at present, is 
not to be disputed. They were Protestants to the back- 
bone. They knew nothing and cared nothing about the 
Apostolical Succession. They had no sacerdotal preten- 
sions ; they made no claims to be essentially distinguished 
from the laity. Their official duties sat lightly on them. 
They read the Sunday services, administered the commun- 
ion four times a year, preached commonplace sermons, 
baptized the children, married them when they grew to 
maturity, and buried them when they died ; and for the 
rest they lived much as other people lived, like country 
gentlemen of moderate fortune, and, on the whole, setting 
an example of resj^ectability. The incumbents of benefices 
over a great part of England were men with small landed 
properties of their own. They farmed their own glebes. 
They were magistrates, and attended quarter sessions and 
petty sessions, and in remote districts, where there were 
no resident gentry of consequence, were the most effective 
guardians of the public peace. They affected neither aus- 
terity nor singularity. They rode, shot, hunted, ate and 
drank, like other people ; occasionally, when there was no 
no one else to take the work upon them, they kept the 
hounds. In dress and habit they were simjily a superior 
class of small country gentlemen ; very far from immacu- 
late, but, taken altogether, wholesome and solid members 
of practical English life. It may seem like a purposed 
affront to their anxious and pallid successors, clad in 
sacerdotal uniform, absorbed in their spiritual functions, 



Ori Progress. 255 

glorying in their Divine commission, passionate theolo- 
gians, occupied from week's end to week's end with the 
souls of their flocks, to contrast them unfavorably with 
secular parsons who, beyond their mechanical offices, had 
nothing of the priest to distinguish them ; yet it is no less 
certain that the rector of the old school stood on sounder 
terms with his parishioners, and had stronger influence 
over their conduct. He had more in common with them. 
He understood them better, and they understood him 
better. The Establishment was far more deeply rooted in 
the affections of the people. The measure of its strength 
may be found in those very abuses, so much complained 
of, which, nevertheless, it was able to survive. The for- 
gotten toast of Church and King was a matter of course 
at every county dinner. The omission of it would have 
been as much a scandal as the omission of grace. Dis- 
senters sat quiescent under disabilities which the general 
sentiment approved. The revival of spiritual zeal has been 
accompanied with a revival of instability. As the clergy 
have learnt to magnify their office, the laity have become 
indifferent or hostile. 

Many causes may be suggested to explain so singular a 
jDhenomenon. It is enough to mention one. The parson 
of the old school, however ignorant of theology, however 
outwardly worldly in character, did sincerely and faithfully 
believe in the truth of the Christian religion ; and the con- 
gregation which he addressed was troubled with as few 
doubts as himself Butler and Berkeley speak alike of 
the spread of infidelity ; but it was an infidelity confined 
to the cultivated classes — to the London wits who read 
Bolingbroke or Hume's " Essays " or " Candide." To the 
masses of the English people, to the parishioners who 
gathered on Sundays into the churches, whose ideas were 
confined to the round of their common occupations, who 
never left their own neighborhood, never saw a newspaper 
or read a book but the Bible and the " Pilofrim's Progress,'* 



256 On Progress, 

the main facts of the Gospel history were as indisputably 
true as the elementary laws of the universe. That Christ 
had risen from the dead was as sure as that the sun had 
risen that morning. That they would themselves rise was 
as certain as that they would die ; and as positively would 
one day be called to judgment for the good or ill that they 
had done in life. It is vain to appeal to their habits as a 
proof that their fiiitil^ was unreal. Every one of us who 
will look candidly into his own conscience can answer that 
objection. Every one of us, whatever our speculative 
oi^inions, knows better than he practices, and recognizes a 
better law than he obeys. Belief and practice tend in the 
long run, and in some degree, to correspond ; but in detail 
and in particular instances they may be wide asunder as 
the poles. The most lawless boys at school, and the loosest 
young men at college, have the keenest horror of intellec- 
tual skepticism. Their passions may carry them away ; but 
they look forward to repenting in the end. Later in life 
they may take refuge in infidelity if they are unable to part 
with their vices ; but the compatibility of looseness of habit 
with an unshaken conviction of the general truths of relig- 
ion is a feature of our nature which history and personal 
experience alike confirm. 

It is unnecessary to dwell U23on the change which has 
passed over us all during the last forty years. The most 
ardent ritualist now knows at heart that the ground is hol- 
low under him. He wrestles with his uncertainties. He 
conceals his misgivings from his own eyes by the passion 
with which he flings himself into his work. He recoils, as 
every generous-minded man must recoil, from the blankness 
of the prospect which threatens to open before him. To 
escape the cloud which is gathering over the foundations 
of his faith he busies himself with artificial enthusiasm in 
the external expressions of it. He buries his head in his 
vestments. He is vehement upon doctrinal minutiae, as if 
only these were at stake. He clutches at the curtains 



On Progress* 257 

of mediaeval theology to hide his eyes from the lightning 
which is blinding hrm. His efforts are vain. His own con- 
victions are undermined in spite of him. What men as 
able as he is to form an opinion doubt about, by the nature 
of the case is made doubtful. And neither in himself nor 
in the congregations whom he adjures so passionately is 
there any basis of unshaken belief remaining. He is like a 
man toiling with all his might to build a palace out of dry 
sand. Ecclesiastical revivals are going on all over the 
world, and all from the same cause. The Jew, the Turk, 
the Hindoo, the Roman Catholic, the Anglo-Catholic, the 
Protestant English Dissenter, are striving with all their 
might to blow into flame the expiring ashes of their hearth 
fires. They are building synagogues and mosques, building 
and restoring churches, writing books and tracts ; persuad- 
ing themselves and others with spasmodic agony that the 
thing they love is not dead, but sleeping. Only the Ger- 
mans, only those who have played no tricks with their souls, 
and have carried out boldly the spirit as well as the letter 
of the Reformation, are meeting the future with courage 
and manliness, and retain their faith in the living reality 
while the outward forms are passing away. 

III. 
The education question is part of the Church question, 
and we find in looking at it precisely the same phenomena. 
Education has two aspects. On one side it is the cultiva- 
tion of man's reason, the development of his spiritual na- 
ture. It elevates him above the pressure of material inter- 
ests. It makes him superior to the pleasures and the pains 
of a world which is but his temporary home, in filling his 
mind with higher subjects than the occupations of life would 
themselves provide him with. One man in a million of pe- 
culiar gifts may be allowed to go no farther, and may spend 
his time in pursuits merely intellectual. A life of specula- 
tion to the multitude, however, would be a life of idleness 
17 



258 On Progress. 

and uselessness. They have to maintain tliemselves in in- 
dustrious independence in a world in which it has been 
said there are but three possible modes of existence, — beg- 
ging, stealing, and working ; and education means also the 
equipping a man with means to earn his own living. Every 
nation which has come to anything considerable has grown 
by virtue of a vigorous and wholesome education. A na- 
tion is but the aggregate of the individuals of which it is 
composed. Where individuals grow up ignorant and inca- 
pable, the result is anarchy and torpor. Where there has 
been energy, and organized strength, there is or has been 
also an effective training of some kind. From a modern 
platform speech one would infer that before the present 
generation the schoolmaster had never been thought of, and 
that the English of past ages had been left to wander in dark- 
ness. Were this true, they would have never risen out of 
chaos. The problem was understood in Old England bet- 
ter probably than the platform orator understands it, and 
received a more practical solution than any which on our 
new principles has yet been arrived at. Five out of six of 
us have to earn our bread by manual labor, and will have 
to earn it so to the end of the chapter. Five out of six 
English children in past generations were in consequence 
apprenticed to some trade or calling by which that neces- 
sary feat could be surely accomplished. They learnt in 
their catechisms and at church that they were responsible to 
their Maker for the use which they made of their time. 
They were taught that there was an immortal part of them, 
the future of which depended on their conduct while they 
remained on earth. The first condition of a worthy life 
was to be able to live honestly ; and in the farm or at the 
forge, at the cobbler's bench or in the carpenter's yard, they 
learnt to stand on their own feet, to do good and valuable 
work for which society would thank and pay them. Thence- 
forward they could support themselves and those belonging 
to them without meanness, without cringing, without demor- 



On Progress. 25 9 

alizing obligation to others, and had laid in nigged s(?lf- 
dependence the only foundation for a firm and npright char- 
acter. The old English education was the apprentice 
system. In every parish in England the larger household- 
ers, the squire and the parson, the farmers, smiths, joiners, 
shoemakers, were obliged by law to divide among them- 
selves according to their means the children of the poor 
who would otherwise grow up unprovided for, and clothe, 
feed, lodge, and teach them in return for their services till 
they were old enough to take care of themselves. This 
was the rule which was acted upon for many centuries. It 
broke down at last. The burden was found disagreeable ; 
the inroad too heavy upon natural liberty. The gentlemen 
were the first to decline or evade their obligations. Their 
business was to take boys and girls for household service. 
They preferred to have their servants ready made. They 
did not care to encumber their establishments with awk- 
ward urchins or untidy slatterns who broke their china, and 
whom they were unable to dismiss. The farmers and the 
artisans objected naturally to bearing the entire charge — 
they who had sufficient trouble to keep their own heads 
above water : they had learnt from the gentlemen that their 
first duties were to themselves, and their ill humor vented 
itself on the poor little wretches who were flung upon their 
unwilling hands. The children were ill-used, starved, 
beaten. In some instances they were killed. The benevo- 
lent instincts of the country took up their cause. The ap- 
prenticeship under its compulsory form passed away amidst 
universal execrations. The masters were relieved from the 
obligation to educate, the lads themselves from the obliga- 
tion to be educated. They were left to their parents, to 
their own helplessness, to the chances and casualties of life, 
to grow up as they could, and drift untaught into whatever 
occupation they could find. Then first arose the cry for the 
schoolmaster. The English clergy deserve credit for hav- 
ing been the first to see the mischief that must follow, and 



260 On Progy-ess. 

to look for a remedy. If these forlorn waifs and strays 
could no longer be trained, they could not be permitted to 
become savages. They could learn, at least, to read and 
write. They could learn to keep themselves clean. They 
could be broken into habits of decency and obedience, and 
be taught something of the world into which they were to 
be flung out to sink or swim. Democracy gave an imj^ulse 
to the movement. " We must educate our masters," said 
Mr. Lowe sarcastically. Whether what is now meant by 
education will make their rule more intelligent remains to 
be seen. Still the thing is to be done. Children whose par- 
ents cannot help them are no longer utterly without a friend. 
The State charges itself with their minds, if not their bod- 
ies. Henceforward they are to receive such equipment for 
the battle of life as the schoolmaster can provide. 

It is something, but the event only can prove that it will 
be as useful as an apprenticeship to a trade, with the Lord's 
Prayer and the Commandments at its back. The condi- 
tions on which we have our being in this planet remain un- 
changed. Intelligent work is as much a necessity as ever, 
and the proportion of us who must set our hands to it is 
not reduced. Labor is the inevitable lot of the majority, 
and the best education is that which will make their labor 
most productive. I do not undervalue book knowledge. 
Under any aspect it is a considerable thing. If the books 
be well chosen and their contents really mastered, it may 
be a beautiful thing ; but the stubborn fact will remain, 
that after the years, be they more or be they less, which 
have been spent at school, the pupil will be launched into 
life as unable as when he first entered the school door to 
earn a sixpence, possessing neither skill nor knowledge for 
which any employer in England will be willing to hire his 
services. An enthusiastic clergyman who had meditated 
long on the unfairness of confining mental culture to the 
classes who had already so many other advantages, gave his 
village boys the same education which he had received him- 



On Progress. 2G1 

self. He taught them languages and literature, and moral 
science, and art and music. He unfitted them for the state 
of life in which they were born. He was unable to raise 
them into a better. He sent one of the most promising 
of them with high recommendations to seek employment in 
a London banking-house. The lad was asked what he could 
do. It was found that, allowing for his age, he could pass a 
fair examination in two or three plays of Shakespeare. 

Talent, it is urged, real talent, crippled hitherto by want 
of opportunity, will be enabled to show itself. It may be so. 
Real talent, however, is not the thing which we need be 
specially anxious about. It can take care of itself. If we 
look down the roll of English worthies in all the great pro- 
fessions, in church and law, in army and navy, in literature, 
science and trade, we see at once that the road must have 
been always open for boys of genius to rise. We have to 
consider the million, not the units ; the average, not the 
exceptions. 

It was argued again that by educating boys' minds, and 
postponing till later their special industrial training, we 
learn better what each is fit for ; time is left for special fit- 
nesses to show themselves. We shall make fewer mistakes, 
and boys will choose the line of life for which nature has 
qualified them. This may sound plausible, but capacity of 
a peculiarly special kind is the same as genius, and may be 
left to find its own place. A Canova or a Faraday makes 
his way through all impediments into the occupation which 
belongs to him. Special qualifications, unless they are of 
the highest order, do not exist to a degree worth consider- 
ing. A boy's nature runs naturally into the channel which 
is dug for it. Teach him to do any one thing, and in doing 
so you create a capability ; and you create a taste along 
with it ; his further development will go as far and as wide 
as his strength of faculty can reach ; and such varied knowl- 
edge as he may afterwards accumulate will grow as about 
a stem round the one paramount occupation which is tlie 
business of his life. 



262 On Progress. 

A sharp lad, with general acquirements, yet unable to 
turn his hand to one thing more than another, drifts through 
existence like a leaf blown before the wind. Even if he 
retains what he has learnt, it is useless to him. The great 
majority so taught do not retain, and cannot retain, what 
they learn merely as half-understood proj^ositions, and 
which they have no chance of testing by practice. Virgil 
and Sophocles, logic and geometry, with the ordinary uni- 
versity pass-man, are as much lost to him in twenty years 
from his degree as if he had never construed a line or 
worked a problem. Why should we expect better of the 
pupil of the middle or lower class, whose education ends with 
his boyhood ? Why should his memory remain burdened 
with generalities of popular science, names and dates from 
history which have never been more than words to him, or 
the commonplaces of political economy, which, if he attaches 
any meaning at all to them, he regards as the millionaire's 
catechism, which he will believe when he is a millionaire 
himself? The knowledge which a man can use is the only 
real knowledge, the only knowledge which has life and 
growth in it, and converts itself into practical power. The 
rest hangs like dust about the brain, or di'ies like rain-drops 
off the stones. 

The mind expands, we are told ; larger information gen- 
erates larger and nobler thoughts. Is it so ? We must 
look to the facts. General knowledge means general igno- 
rance, and an ignorance, unfortunately, which is unconscious 
of itself. Quick wits are sharpened up. Young fellows so 
educated learn that the world is a large place, and contains 
many pleasant things for those who can get hold of them. 
Their ideas doubtless are inflated, and with them their ambi- 
tions and desires. They have gained nothing towards the 
wholesome gratifying of those desires, while they have 
gained considerable discontent at the inequalities of what 
is called fortune. They are the ready-made prey of plausi- 
ble palaver written or spoken, but they are without meaiis 



On Progress. 263 

of self-help, without seriousness and without stability. They 
believe easily that the world is out of joint because they, 
with their little bits of talents, miss the instant recognition 
which they think their right. Their literature, which the 
precious art of reading has opened out to them, is the 
penny newspaper ; their creed, the latest popular chimera 
which has taken possession of the air. They form the 
classes which breed like mushrooms in the modern towns, 
and are at once the scorn and the perplexity of the thought- 
ful statesman. They are Fenians in Ireland, trades-union- 
ists in England, rabid partisans of slavery or rabid aboli- 
tionists in America, socialists and red republicans on the 
Continent. It is better that they should have any education 
than none. The evils caused by a smattering of informa- 
tion, sounder knowledge may eventually cure. I refuse 
only to admit that the transition from the old industrial ed- 
ucation to the modern book education is, for the present or 
the immediate future, a sign of what can be called progress. 
Let there be more religion, men say. Education will 
not do without religion. Along with the secular lessons we 
must have Bible lessons, and then all will go well. It is 
perfectly true that a consciousness of moral responsibility, a 
sense of the obligation of truth and honesty and purity, lies 
at the bottom of all right action — that without it knowl- 
edge is useless, that with it everything will fall into its 
place. But it is with religion as with all else of which I 
am speaking. Religion can be no more learnt out of books 
than seamanship, or soldiership, or engineering, or painting, 
or any practical trade whatsoever. The doing right alone 
teaches the value or the meaning of right ; the doing it will- 
ingly, if the will is happily constituted ; the doing it unwill- 
ingly, or under compulsion, if persuasion fails to convince. 
The general lesson lies in the commandment once taught 
with authority by the clergyman ; the application of it in 
the details of practical life, in the execution of the particu- 
lar duty which each moment brings with it. The book Ics- 



264 On Progress. 

son, be it Bible lesson, or commentary, or catechism, can at 
best be nothing more than the communication of historical 
incidents of which half the educated world have begun to 
question the truth, or the dogmatic assertion of opinions 
over which theologians quarrel and will quarrel to the end 
of time. France has been held up before us for the last 
twenty years as the leader, of civilization, and Paris as the 
headquarters of it. The one class in this supreme hour of 
trial for that distracted nation in which there is most hope 
of good is that into which the ideas of Paris have hitherto 
failed to penetrate. The French 2:)easant sits as a child at 
the feet of the priesthood of an exploded idolatry. His 
ignorance of books is absolute ; his superstitions are con- 
temptible ; but he has retained a practical remembrance 
that he has a Master in heaven who will call him to account 
for his life. In the cultivation of his garden and vineyard, 
in the simple round of agricultural toil, he has been saved 
from the temptation of the prevailing delusions, and has led, 
for the most part, a thrifty, self-denying, industrious, and 
useful existence. Keener sarcasm it would be hard to find 
on the inflated enthusiasm of progress. 

IV. 

Admitting — and we suspect very few of our readers will 
be inclined to admit — that there is any truth in these 
criticisms, it will still be said that our shortcomings are on 
the way to cure themselves. We have but recently roused 
ourselves from past stagnation, and that a new constitution 
of things cannot work at once with all-sided j^erfection is 
no more than we might exjDCct. Shortcomings there may 
be, and our business is to find them out and mend them. 
The means are now in our hands. The people have at 
last political power. All interests are now represented in 
Parliament. All are sure of consideration. Class govern- 
ment is at an end. Aristocracies, land-owners, establislied 
churches, can abuse their privileges no longer. The ;ige 



On Progi^ess, 265 

of monopolies is gone. England belongs to herself. We 
are at last free. 

It would be well if there were some definition of freedom 
which would enable men to see clearly what they mean 
and do not mean by that vaguest of words. The English 
Liturgy says that freedom is to be found perfectly in the 
service of God. " Intellectual emancipation,^^ says Goethe, 
" if it does not give us at the same time control over our- 
selves is poisonous^ Undoubtedly the best imaginable 
state of human things would be one in which everybody 
thought with perfect correctness and acted perfectly well 
of his own free will, unconstrained, and even unguided, by 
external authority. But inasmuch as no such condition as 
this can be looked for this side of the day of judgment, the 
question forever arises how far the unwise should be gov- 
erned by the wise — how far society should be protected 
against the eccentricities of fools, and fools be protected 
against themselves. There is a right and a wrong prin- 
ciple on which each man's life can be organized. There is 
a right or a wrong in detail at every step which he takes. 
Much of this he must learn for himself He must learn to 
act as he learns to walk. He obtains command of his limbs 
by freely using them. To hold him up each time that he 
totters is to deprive him of his only means of learning how 
not to fall. There are other things in which it is equally 
clear that he must not be left to himself. Not only may 
he not in the exercise of his liberty do what is injurious to 
others — he must not seriously injure himself. A stumble 
or a fall is a wholesome lesson to take care, but he is not 
left to learn by the effects that poison is poison, or getting 
drunk is brutalizing. He is forbidden to do what wiser 
men than he know to be destructive to him. If he refuses 
to believe them, and acts on his own judgment, he is not 
gaining any salutary instruction — he is simply hurting 
himself, and has a just ground of complaint ever after 
against those who ought to have restrained him. As we 



266 On Progress. 

" become our own masters," to use the popular phrase, we 
are left more and more to our own guidance, but we are 
"never so entirely masters of ourselves that we are free from 
restraint altogether. The entire fabric of human existence 
is woven of the double threads of freedom and authority, 
which are forever wrestling one against the other. Their 
legitimate spheres slide insensibly one into the other. The 
limits of each vary with time, circumstances, and character, 
and no rigid line can be drawn which neither ought to 
overpass. There are occupations in which error is the only 
educator. There are actions which it is right to blame, 
but not forcibly to check or punish. There are actions 
again — actions like suicide — which may concern no one 
but a man's self, yet which nevertheless it may be right 
forcibly to prevent. Precise rules cannot be laid do^vn 
which will meet all cases. 

The private and personal habits of grown men lie for the 
most part outside the pale of interference. It is otherwise, 
however, in the relations of man to society. There, run- 
ning through every fibre of those relations, is justice and 
injustice" — justice which means the health and life of 
society, injustice which is poison and death. As a member 
of society a man parts with his natural rights, and society 
in turn incurs a debt to him which it is bound to discharge. 
Where the debt is adequately rendered, where on both 
sides there is a consciousness of obligation, where rulers 
and ruled alike understand that more is required of them 
than attention to their separate interests, and where they 
discern with clearness in what that " more " consists, there 
at once is good government, there is supremacy of law — 
law written in the statute book, and law written in the 
statute book of heaven ; and there, and only there, is free- 
dom. 

Das Gesetz soil nur ims Freiheit geben. 
As in personal morality liberty is self-restraint, and self- 
indulgence is slavery, so political freedom is possible only 



Or Progress. 267 

where justice is in the seat of authority, where all orders 
and degrees work in harmony with the organic laws which 
man neither made nor can alter — where the unwise are 
directed by the wise, and those who are trusted with power 
use it for the common good. 

A country so governed is a free country, be the form of 
the constitution what it may. A country not so governed 
is in bondasfe, be its sufFrao^e never so universal. Where 
justice is sujDreme, no subject is forbidden anything which 
he has a right to do or to desire ; and therefore it is that 
political changes, revolutions, reforms, transfers of power 
from one order to another, from kings to aristocracies, 
from aristocracies to peoples, are in themselves no neces- 
sary indications of political or moral advance. They mean 
merely that those in authority are no longer lit to be 
trusted with exclusive power. They mean that those high 
persons are either ignorant, and so incapable, or have for- 
gotten the public good in their own pleasures, ambitions, 
or suj^erstitions ; that they have ceased to be the represen- 
tatives of any superior wisdom or deeper moral insight, 
and may therefore justly be deprived of privileges which 
they abuse for their own advantage and for public mischief. 
Healthy nations, when justly governed, never demand con- 
stitutional changes. Men talk of entrusting power to the 
people as a moral education, as enlarging their self-respect, 
elevatmg their imaginations, making them alive to their 
dignity as human beings. It is well, perhaps, that we 
should dress up in fine words a phenomenon which is less 
agreeable in his nakedness. But at the bottom of things 
the better sort are always loyal to governments which are 
doing their business well and impartially. They doubt the 
probability of being themselves likely to mend matters, 
and are thankful to let well alone. The growth of popular 
constitutions in a country originally governed by an aris- 
tocracy implies that the aristocracy is not any more a real 
aristocracy — that it is alive to its own interests and blind 



268 On Progress, 

to other people's interests. It does not imply that those 
others are essentially wiser or better, but only that they 
understand where their own shoe pinches ; and that if it 
be merely a question of interest, they have a right to be 
considered as well as the class above them. In one sense 
it may be called an advance, that in the balance of power 
so introduced jDarticular forms of aggravated injustice may 
be rendered impossible ; but we are brought no nearer to 
the indispensable thing without which no human society 
can work healthily or happily — the sovereignty of wisdom 
over folly — the preeminence of justice and right over 
greediness and self-seeking. The unjust authority is put 
away, the right authority is not installed in its place. Peo- 
ple suppose it a great thing that every English householder 
should have a share in choosing his governors. Is it that 
the functions of government being reduced to a cipher, the 
choice of its administrators may be left to hap-hazard ? 
The crew of a man-of-war understand something of sea- 
manship ; the rank and file of a regiment are not absolutely 
without an inkling of the nature of military service ; yet 
if seamen and soldiers were allowed to choose their own 
leaders, the fate of fleets and armies so officered would not 
be hard to predict. Because they are not utterly ignorant 
of their business, and because they do not court their own 
destruction, the first use which the best of them would 
make of such a privilege would be to refuse to act upon it. 
No one seriously supposes that popular sufii-age gives 
us a wiser Parliament than we used to have. Under the 
rotten borough system Parliament was notoriously a far 
better school of statemanship than it is or ever can be 
where the merits of candidates have first to be recognized 
by constituencies. The rotten borough system fell, not 
because it was bad in itself, but because it was abused to 
maintain injustice — to enrich the aristocracy and the land- 
owners at the expense of the people. We do not look for 
a higher morality in the classes whom we have admitted 



On Progress. 269 

to power; we expect them only to be sharp enough to 
understand their own concerns. We insist that each 
interest shall be represented, and we anticipate from the 
equipoise the utmost attainable amount of justice. It may 
be called progress, but it is a public confession of despair 
of human nature. It is as much as to say, that although 
wisdom may be higher than folly as far as heaven is above 
earth, the wise man has no more principle than the fool. 
Give him jDOwer and he will read the moral laws of the 
universe into a code which will only fill his own pocket, 
and being no better than the fool, has no more right to be 
listened to. The entire Civil Service of this counfry has 
been opened amidst universal acclamations to public com- 
petition. Any one who is not superannuated, and has not 
incurred notorious disgrace, may present himself to the 
Board of Examiners, and win himself a place in a public 
department. Everybody knows that if the heads of the 
departments were honestly to look for the fittest person 
that they could find to fill a vacant office, they could make 
better selections than can be made for them under the new 
method. The alteration means merely that these superior 
jDcrsons will not or cannot use their patronage disinterest- 
edly, and that of two bad methods of choice the choice by 
examination is the least mischievous. 

The world calls all this progress. I call it only change ; 
change which may bring us nearer to a better order of 
things, as the ploughing up and rooting the weeds out of a 
fallow is a step towards growing a clean crop of wheat 
there, but without a symptom at present showing of healthy 
organic growth. When a block of type from which a book 
has been printed is broken up into its constituent letters, 
the letters so disintegrated are called " pi." The pi, a 
mere chaos, is afterwards sorted and distributed, preparatory 
to being built up into fresh combinations. A distinguished 
American friend describes Democracy as " making pi." 

Meanwhile, beside the social confusion, tlie knowledge 



270 On Progress, 

of outward things aucl the command of natural forces are 
progressing really with steps rapid, steady, and indeed 
gigantic. '' Knowledge comes " if " wisdom lingers." The 
man of science discovers ; the mechanist and the engineer 
appropriate and utilize each invention as it is made ; and 
thus each day tools are formed or fprming, which hereafter, 
when under moral control, will elevate the material con- 
dition of the entire human race. The labor which a hun- 
dred years ago made a single shirt now makes a dozen or 
a score. Ultimately it is possible that the harder and 
grosser forms of work will be done entirely by machinery, 
and leisure be left to the human drudge which may lift 
him bodily into another scale of existence. For the present 
no such effect is visible. The mouths to be fed and the 
backs to be covered multiply even faster than the means of 
feeding and clothing them ; and conspicuous as have been 
the fruits of machinery in the increasing luxuries of the 
minority, the level of comfort in the families of the labor- 
ing millions has in this country been rather declining than 
rising. The important results have been so far rather 
political and social. Watt, Stephenson, and Wheatstone, 
already and while their discoveries are in their infancy, 
have altered the relation of every country in the world 
with its neighbors. The ocean barriers between continents 
which Nature seemed to have raised for eternal separation 
have been converted into easily travelled highways ; moun- 
tain chains are tunneled ; distance, once the most trouble- 
some of realities, has ceased to exist. The inventions of 
these three men determined the fate of the revolt of the 
Slave States. But for them and their work the Northern 
armies would have crossed the Potomac in mere handfuls, 
exhausted with enormous marches. The iron roads lent 
their help. The collected strength of all New England 
and the West was able to fling itself into the work ; negro 
slavery is at an end ; and the Union is not to be split like 
Europe into a number of independent States, but is to re- 



On Progress, 271 

main a single power, to exercise an influence yet unim- 
aginable on the future fortunes of mankind. Aided by the 
same mechanical facilities, Germany obliterates the dividing 
lines of centuries. The Americans preserved the unity 
which they had. The Germans conquer for themselves a 
unity which they had not. France interferes, and half a 
million soldiers are collected and concentrated in a fort- 
night ; armies, driven in like wedges, open rents and gaps 
from the Rhine to Orleans ; and at the end of two months 
the nation whose military strength was supposed to be the 
greatest in the world was reeling paralyzed under blows to 
which these modern contrivances had exposed her. So far 
we may be satisfied ; but who can foresee the ultimate 
changes of which these are but the initial symptoms ? 
Who will be rash enough to say that they will promote 
necessarily the happiness of mankind ? They are but 
weapons which may be turned to good or evil, according 
to the characters of those who best understand how to use 
them. 

The same causes have created as rapidly a tendency no 
less momentous towards migration and interfusion, which 
may one day produce a revolution in the ideas of allegiance 
and nationality. English, French, Germans, Irish, even 
Chinese and Hindus, are scattering themselves over the 
world ; some bond fide in search of new homes, some 
merely as temporary residents — but any way establishing 
themselves wherever a living is to be earned in every 
corner of the globe, careless of the flag under which they 
have passed. Far the largest part will never return ; they 
will leave descendants, to whom their connection with the 
old country will be merely matter of history : but the ease 
with which we can now go from one place to the other will 
keep alive an intention of returning, though it be never 
carried out ; and as the numbers of these denizens multi- 
ply, intricate problems have already risen as to their alle- 
giance, and will become more and more complicated. Tlie 



272 On Progress. 

English at Hong Kong and Shanghai have no intention 
of becoming Chinese, but their presence there has shaken 
the stability of the Chinese empire, and has cost that conn- 
try, if the returns are not enormously exaggerated, in the 
civil wars and rebellions of which they have been the indi- 
rect occasion, a hundred million lives. 

From the earliest times we trace migrations of nations 
or the founding of colonies by spirited adventurers ; but 
never was the process going on at such a rate as now, and 
never with so little order or organized communion of 
purpose. No ingenuity could have devised a plan for the 
disjiersion of the suj)erfluous part of the European pojiu- 
lations so effective as the natural working of personal 
impulse, backed by these new facilities. The question 
still returns, however, To what purpose ? Are the effects 
of emigration to be only as the effects of machinery ? Are 
a few hundred millions to be added to the population of 
the globe merely that they may make money and spend it ? 
In all the great movements at present visible there is as 
yet no trace of the working of intellectual or moral ideas — 
no sign of a conviction that man has more to live for than 
to labor and eat the fruit of his labor. 

So far, perhaps, the finest result of scientific activity lies 
in the personal character which devotion of a life to science 
seems to produce. While almost every other occupation 
is pursued for the money which can be made out of it, and 
success is measured by the money result which has been 
realized — while even artists and men of letters, with here 
and there a brilliant exception, let the bankers' book be- 
come more and more the criterion of their being on the 
right road, the men of science alone seem to value knowl- 
edge for its own sake, and to be valued in return for the 
addition which they are able to make to it. A dozen dis- 
tinguished men might be named who have shown intellect 
enough to qualify them for the woolsack, or an archbishop's 
mitre : external rewards of this kind miaht be tliouolit the 



On Progress, 273 

natural recompense for work which produces results so 
splendid ; but they are quietly and unconsciously indifferent 
— they are happy in their own occupations, and ask no 
more ; and that here, and here only, there is real and un- 
deniable progress is a significant proof that the laws remain 
unchanged under which true excellence of any kind is at- 
tainable. 

To conclude. 

The accumulation of wealth, with its daily services at 
the Stock Exchange and the Bourse, with international 
exhibitions for its religious festivals, and political economy 
for its gospel, is progress, if it be progress at all, towards 
the wrong place. Baal, the god of the merchants of Tyre, 
counted four hundred and fifty prophets when there was 
but one Elijah. Baal was a visible reality. Baal rose in 
his sun-chariot in the morning, scattered the evil spirits of 
the night, lightened the heart, quickened the seed in the 
soil, clothed the hill-side with waving corn, made the gar- 
dens bright with flowers, and loaded the vineyard with its 
purple clusters. When Baal turned away his face the 
earth languished, and dressed herself in her winter mourn- 
ing robe. Baal was the friend who held at bay the ene- 
mies of mankind — cold, nakedness, and hunger ; who was 
kind alike to the evil and the good, to those who wor- 
shipped him and those who forgot their benefactor. Com- 
pared to him, what was the being that " hid himself," the 
name without a form — that was called on, but did not 
answer — who appeared in visions of the night, terrifying 
the uneasy sleeper with visions of horror ? Baal was god. 
The other was but the creation of a frightened imagina- 
tion — a phantom that had no existence outside the brain 
of fools and dreamers. Yet in the end Baal could not save 
Samaria from the Assyrians, any more than progress and 
" unexampled prosperity " have rescued Paris from Von 
Moltke. Paris will rise from her fallen state, if rise she 
does, by a return to the uninviting virtues of harder and 
18 



274 On Progress, 

simpler times. The modern creed bids every man look 
first to his cash-box. Fact says, that the cash-box must be 
the second concern — that a man's life consists not in the 
abundance of things that he possesses. The modern creed 
says, by the mouth of a President of the Board of Trade, 
that adulteration is the fruit of competition, and, at worst, 
venial delinquency. Fact says, that this vile belief has 
gone like poison into the marrow of tlie nations. The 
modern creed looks complacently on luxury as a stimulus 
to trade. Fact says, that luxury has disorganized society, 
severed the bonds of good-will which unite man to man, 
and class to class, and generated distrust and hatred. The 
modern creed looks on impurity with an approbation none 
tlie less real that it dares not openly avow it, dreading the 
darkest sins less than over-population. Fact — which if it 
cannot otherwise secure a hearing, expresses itself at last 
in bayonets and bursting shells — declares that if our 
great mushroom towns cannot clear themselves of pollu- 
tion, the world will not long endure their presence. 

A serious person, when he is informed that any particular 
country is making strides in civilization, will ask two ques- 
tions. First personally, Are the individual citizens grow- 
ing more pure in their private habits ? Are they true and 
just in their dealings ? Is their intelligence, if they are be- 
coming intelligent, directed towards learning and doing 
what is right, or are they looking only for more extended 
pleasures, and for the means of obtaining them ? Are they 
making progress in what old-fashioned people used to call 
the fear of God, or are their personal selves and the indul- 
gence of their own inclinations the end and aim of their ex- 
istence ? That is one question, and the other is its counter- 
part. Each nation has a certain portion of the earth's 
surface allotted to it, from which the means of its support 
are being wrung : are the proceeds of labor distributed justly, 
according to the work which each individual has done ; or 
does one ]iloiii:jh and imotlier reap in virtue of superior 
tit-(j;!'/tii , . i; iviioi" vjlj.jiMjj;, jc c.i i^i .i.i;. 



On Progress, 275 

These are the criteria of progress. All else is merely 
misleading. In a state of natm'e there is no law but phys- 
ical force. As society becomes organized, strength is co- 
erced by greater strength ; arbitrary violence is restrained 
by the policeman; and the relations between man and man, 
in some degree, are humanized. That is true improvement. 
But large thews and sinews are only the rudest of the gifts 
which enable one man to take advaiitao;e of his neiofhbor. 
Sharpness of wit gives no higher title to superiority than 
bigness of muscle and bone. The power to overreach 
requires restraint as much as the power to rob and kill ; 
and the progress of civilization depends on the extent of the 
domain which is reclaimed under the moral law. Nations 
have been historically great in proportion to their success 
in this direction. Religion, while it is sound, creates a basis 
of conviction on which legislation can act ; and where the 
legislator drops the problem, the spiritual teacher takes it 
up. So long as a religion is believed, and so long as it re- 
tains a practical direction, the moral idea of right can be 
made the principle of government. When religion degen- 
erates into superstition or doctrinalism, the statesman loses 
his ground, and laws intended, as it is scornfully said, to 
make men virtuous by Act of Parliament, either sink into 
desuetude or are formally abandoned. How far modern 
Europe has travelled in this direction would be too large an 
inquiry. Thus much, however, is patent, and, so far as our 
own country is concerned, is proudly avowed : Provinces of 
action once formally occupied by law have been abandoned 
to anarchy. Statutes which regulated wages, statutes which 
assessed prices, statutes which interfered with personal lib- 
erty, in the supposed interests of the commonwealth, have 
been repealed as mischievous. It is now held that beyond 
the prevention of violence and the grossest forms of fraud, 
government can meddle only for mischief — that crime only 
needs repressing, — and that a comnaunity prospers best 
where every one is left to scramble for himself, and find the 



276 On Progress » 

place for which his gifts best qualify him. Justice, which 
was held formerly to be coextensive with human conduct, 
is limited to the smallest corner of it. The laborer or arti- 
san has a right only to such wages as he can extort out of 
the employer. The purchaser who is cheated in a shop 
must blame his own simplicity, and endeavor to be wiser for 
the future. 

Habits of obedience, moral convictions inherited from 
earlier times, have enabled this singular theory to work for 
a time ; men have submitted to be defrauded rather than 
quarrel violently with the institutions of their country. 
There are symptoms, however, which indicate that the 
period of forbearance is waning. Swindling has grown to 
a point among us where the political economist preaches 
patience unsuccessfully, and Trades-Unionism indicates that 
the hififslins: of the market is not the last word on the waives 
question. Government will have to take up again its aban- 
doned functions, and will understand that the cause and 
meaning of its existence is the discovery and enforcement of 
the elementary rules of right and wrong. Here lies the 
road of true progress, and nowhere else. It is no primrose 
path, — with exhibition flourishes, elasticity of revenue, and 
shining lists of exports and imports. The upward climb 
has been ever a steejD and thorny one, involving, first of all, 
the forgetfulness of self, the worship of which, in the creed 
of the economist, is the mainspring of advance. That the 
change will come, if not to us in England, yet to our poster- 
ity somewhere upon the planet, experience forbids us to 
doubt. The probable manner of it is hopelessly obscure. 
Men never willingly acknowledge that they have been ab- 
surdly mistaken. 

An indication of what may possibly happen can be found, 
perhaps, in a singular phenomenon of the spiritual develop- 
ment of mankind which occurred in a far distant age. The 
fact itself is, at all events, so curious that a passing thought 
may be usefully bestowed upon it. 



On Progress. 277 

The Egyptians were the first people upon the earth wlio 
emerged into what is now called civilization. How they 
lived, how they were governed during the tens or hundreds 
of generations which intervened between their earliest and 
latest monuments, there is little evidence to say. At the 
date when they become distinctly visible they present the 
usual features of effete Oriental societies ; the labor execut- 
ed by slave gangs, and a rich, luxurious minority spending 
their time in feasting and revelry. Wealth accumulated, 
art flourished. Enormous engineering works illustrated 
the talent or ministered to the vanity of the priestly and mil- 
itary classes. The favored of fortune basked in perpetual 
sunshine. The millions sweated in the heat under the lash 
of the task-master, and were paid with just so much of the 
leeks, and onions, and fleshpots, as would continue them in 
a condition to work. Of these despised wretches some hun- 
dreds of thousands were enabled by Providence to shake off 
the yoke, to escape over the Red Sea into the Arabian des- 
ert, and there receive from Heaven a code of laws under 
which they were to be governed in the land where they 
were to be planted. 

What were those laws ? 

The Egyptians, in the midst of their corruptions, had in- 
herited the doctrine from their fathers which is considered 
the foundation of all religion. They believed in a life be- 
yond the grave — in the judgment bar of Osiris, at which 
they were to stand on leaving their bodies, and in a future 
of happiness or misery as they had lived well or ill upon 
earth. It was not a speculation of philosophers — it was 
the popular creed ; and it was held with exactly the same 
kind of belief with which it has been held by the Western 
nations since their conversion to Christianity. 

But what was the practical effect of their belief? There 
is no doctrine, however true, which works mechanically on 
the soul like a charm. The expectation of a future state 
may be a motive for the noblest exertion, or it may be an 



278 On Progress. 

excuse for acquiescence in evil, and serve to conceal aLd 
perpetuate the most enormous iniquities. The magnate of 
Thebes or Memphis, with his huge estates, his town and 
country palaces, his retinue of eunuchs, and his slaves whom 
he counted by thousands, was able to say to himself, if he 
thought at all, " True enough, there are inequalities of for- 
tune. These serfs of mine have a miserable time of it, but 
it is only a time after all ; they have immortal souls, poor 
devils ! and their wretched existence here is but a drop of 
water in the ocean of their being. They have as good a 
chance of Paradise as I have — perhaps better. Osiris will 
set all right hereafter; and for the present rich and poor 
are an ordinance of Providence, and there is no occasion to 
disturb established institutions. For myself, I have drawn 
a prize in the lottery, and I hope I am grateful. I sub- 
scribe handsomely to the temple services. I am myself 
punctual in my religious duties. The priests, who are wiser 
than I am, pray for me, and they tell me I may set my 
mind at rest. 

Under this theory of things the Israelites had been 
ground to powder. They broke away. They too were to 
become a nation. A revelation of the true God was be- 
stowed on them, from which, as from a fountain, a deeper 
knowledge of the Divine nature was to flow out over the 
earth ; and the central thought of it was the realization of 
the Divine government — not in a vague hereafter, but in 
the living present. The unpractical prospective justice 
which had become an excuse for tyranny was superseded by 
an immediate justice in time. They were to reap the har- 
vest of their deeds, not in heaven, but on earth. There was 
no life in the grave whither they were going. The future 
state was withdrawn from their sight till the mischief which 
it had wrought was forgotten. It was not denied, but it 
was veiled in a cloud. It was left to private opinion to 
hope or to fear ; but it was no longer held out either as an 
excitement to piety or a terror to evil-doers. The God of 



On Progress. 279 

Israel was a living God, and his power was displayed visi- 
bly and immediately in rewarding the good and punishing 
the wicked while they remained in the flesh. 

It would be unbecoming to press the parallel, but phe- 
nomena are showing themselves which indicate that an 
analogous suspension of belief provoked by the same causes 
may possibly be awaiting ourselves. The relations between 
man and man are now supposed to be governed by natural 
laws which enact themselves independent of considerations 
of justice. Political economy is erected into a science, and 
the shock to our moral nature is relieved by reflections that 
it refers only to earth, and that justice may take effect here- 
after. Science, however, is an inexorable master. The 
evidence for a hereafter depends on considerations which 
science declines to entertain. To piety and conscientious- 
ness it appears inherently probable ; but to the calm, un- 
prejudiced student of realities, piety and conscientiousness 
are insufficient witnesses to matters of fact. The religious 
passions have made too many mistakes to be accepted as of 
conclusive authority. Scientific habits of thought, which 
are more and more controlling us, demand external proofs 
which are difficult to find. It may be that we require once 
more to have the living certainties of the Divine government 
brought home to us more palpably ; that a doctrine which 
has been the consolation of the heavy-laden for eighteen 
hundred years may have generated once more a practical 
infidelity ; and that by natural and intelligent agencies, in 
the furtherance of the everlasting purposes of our Father 
in heaven, the belief in a life beyond the grave may again 
be about to be withdrawn. 



THE COLONIES ONCE MORE. 



The storm which has burst over the Continent may clear 
away as rapidly as it has risen, or it may rage till it has 
searched out and destroyed every unsound place in the or- 
ganization of the European nations. Providence or Nature, 
or whatever the power is which determines the conditions 
under which human things are allowed to grow and prosper, 
uses still, as it has ever used, fierce surgery of this kind for 
the correction of wrong-doing ; and if Providence, as Na- 
poleon scornfully said, is on the side of the strongest battal- 
ions, it provides also, as Napoleon himself found at Leipsic, 
that in the times of these tremendous visitations the strong 
battalions shall be found in defense of the cause which it 
intends shall conquer. England for the present lies outside 
the lines of conflict. Whether she can escape her share of 
trial depends on causes which she can but faintly control ; 
and whether at the close of this present summer,' France 
or Germany lies exhausted, unable to strike another blow, 
or whether the circle of conflagration is to widen its terrible 
area till the whole world is again in arms, it behooves us 
equally to look to ourselves. We have obligations on the 
Continent which we cannot disclaim without dishonor, and 
dishonor tamely borne means to England political ruin. 

A nation of thirty millions, inferior in mental and phys- 
ical capabilities to no other people in the world, moated by 
the sea, defended by a powerful fleet, and united in them- 
selves by hearty loyalty to their country, ought to be in no 
fear of the strongest force which could be hurled against 
1 August, 1870. 



The Colonies onee more. 281 

tliem. But it is on this point of loyalty, of which it has 
been the fashion of late to speak contemptuously as a sen- 
timental virtue, that the result of such an attempt would 
j)erhaps eventually depend. At this moment, if we were 
taken by surprise as Prussia has been, and a hostile power 
could by any means obtain twenty-four hours' command of 
the Channel, London would mevitably be taken ; but if we 
are sound at heart, if England is to us all a home which 
high and low among us are alike determined to defend, as 
the treasure-house which contains all that we value in life, 
the loss of London would but nerve us to a more determined 
struo-orle, and we might still look forward to the last result 
with confidence. We might lose fearfully in life and prop- 
erty, but we should keep our honor untarnished, and our 
great place in the world unshaken. Have we, then, a right 
to expect a spirit in the great masses of our j^eojDle which 
would carry us successfully through such a crisis ? The 
English are instinctively brave and noble-minded. The 
traditions of the past are powerful, and there is a jDrestige 
attached to the present condition of the British Empire 
which for a time at least would raise all classes to a level 
with the demands on their endurance. How long their res- 
olution would last, what amount and what duration of pri- 
vations they would be contented to endure, depends, how- 
ever, on the further question, what interest many of us have 
in England's stability — what each man would lose which 
is really precious to him if she fell from her place. 

The attachment of a people to their country depends 
upon the sense in which it is really and truly their home. 
Men will fight for their homes, because without a home 
they and their families are turned shelterless adrift ; and 
as the world has been hitherto constituted, they have had 
no means of finding a new home for themselves elsewhere. 
And the idea of home is inseparably connected with the 
possession or permanent occupation of land. Where a 
man's property is in money, a slip of paper will now trans- 



282 Tlce Colonies once 7}iore. 

fer it to any part of the world to which he pleases to send 
it. Where it is in the skill of his hands there is another 
hemisphere now oj)en to him, where employers, speaking 
his own language, are eager to secure his ser\dces. Land 
alone he cannot take with him. The fortunes of the pos- 
sessors of the soil of any country are bound up in the 
fortunes of the country to which they belong, and thus 
those nations have always been the most stable in which 
the land is most widely divided, or where the largest num- 
ber of people have a personal concern in it. Interest and 
natural feeling coincide to produce the same result. Ridi- 
cule as we please what is now looked upon as sentimental- 
ism, we cannot escape from our nature. Attachment to 
locality is part of the human constitution. Those who 
have been brought up in particular places have a feeling 
for them which they cannot transfer. A family which has 
occupied a farm for one or two years will leave it without 
difficulty. In one or two generations the wrench becomes 
severely painful. To remove tenants after a half dozen 
generations is like tearing up a grown tree by the roots. 
The world is not outgrowing associations of this kind. It 
never can or will outgrow them. The arcE et foci, the 
sense of home and the sacred associations which grow up 
along with it, are as warm in the new continent as in the 
old. It is not that every member of a family must remain 
on the same spot. The professions and the trades neces- 
sarily absorb a large proportion of the children as they 
grow to manhood ; but it is the pride of the New Eng- 
lander to point to his namesake and kinsman now occupy- 
ing the farm which was first cleared by his Puritan 
ancestors. The home of the elder branch is still the home 
of the family, and the links of association, and all the pas- 
sions which are born of it, hold together and bind in one 
the scattered kindred. 

England was once the peculiar nursery of this kind of 
sentiment, and thus it was that an Englishman's patriotism 



The Colonies once more. 283 

was so peculiarly powerful. It has seemed of late as if all 
other countries understood it better than we. In France, 
in Germany, in Russia, even in Spain and Italy either 
revolution or the wisdom of the government has divided 
the land. The great proprietors have been persuaded or 
induced to sell ; when persuasion has failed they have been 
compelled. The laws of inheritance are so adjusted as to 
make accumulation of estates impossible. Two thirds, or, 
at least, half the population of those countries have their 
lives and fortunes interlinked inseparably with the soil ; 
and their fidelity in time of trial is at once rewarded and 
guaranteed by the possession of it. England is alone an 
exception. When serfdom was extinguished in Russia, 
each serf had a share in his late owner's lands assigned to 
him as his own. The English villein was released from 
his bondage with no further compensation, and is now the 
agricultural laborer — the least cared for specimen of hu- 
manity in any civilized country. In France there are five 
million landed proprietors. In England there are but 
thirty thousand. Such property as the rest of us possess 
is movable. Thirty thousand favorites of fortune alone 
possess that original hold on English soil which entitles 
England in return to depend upon them in the day of trial ; 
and thus it is that to persons who think seriously there 
appears something precarious in England's greatness, as if 
with all her wealth and all her power a single disaster 
might end it. No nation ever suffered a more tremendous 
humiliation than France in the second occupation of Paris ; 
a third time she has seen her capital occupied, and her 
entire social system crumbled into anarchy. But she rallied 
before, and she will unquestionably rally once more. Her 
population remain rooted in the soil to which they are 
passionately attached, and their permanent depression is 
impossible. Forty millions of people can neither be de- 
stroyed nor removed ; and where the people are, and where 
the land is their own, their recovery is a matter of but a 



284 The Colonies once more, 

few years at most. They may lose men and money, and 
an outlying province, but that is all the injury which an 
external power can inflict on them. With England it is 
difficult to feel the same confidence. If the spell of our 
insular security be once broken ; if it be once proved that 
the Channel is no longer an impassable barrier, and that 
we are now on a level with the Continent, the circum- 
stances would be altered which have given us hitherto our 
exceptional advantages ; and those of us who can choose a 
home elsewhere, who have been deprived of everythiug 
which should specially attach us to English soil — that is 
to say, ninety-nine families out of every hundred — will 
have lost all inducement to remain in so unprofitable a 
neighborhood. 

Let it be said at once that we are not blamino; orovern- 
ment or blaming the laws because the small estates are 
absorbed into the large. The process of absorption is the 
result of economic social and moral conditions which can- 
not be interfered with on a scale large enough to produce 
a sensible effect without paralyzing the entire system of 
our national industry. It is a state of things, however, for 
which provision was instinctively made in past generations. 
As English soil became visibly too strait for its increasing 
jjopulation, not the government, but the English them- 
selves, by their own courage and energy, secured to the 
flag enormous slices of the waste places of the newly dis- 
covered world ; enormous areas of soil in which ten times 
as many people as are now choking and jostling one 
another in our lanes and alleys might take root and expand 
and thrive ; and the question is, whether these spaces may 
not be utilized ; whether, without rude changes at home, 
we may not exchange England for an English Empire in 
which every element shall be combined which can promise 
security to the whole ? The fairest part of this vast inher- 
itance was alienated from us by one set of incompetent 
ministers; it is now a rival, and may one day be a hostile 



The Colonies once more, 285 

power. The country, not the government, explored and 
took possession of fresh dominions almost as splendid as 
what had been lost for them. What is to be done with 
these, whether they are to remain attached to us, or are to 
be affronted or encouraged into separation and what is 
called independence, is a matter on which government may 
blunder a second time ; the nation itself is alone competent 
to form and pronounce an opinion. 

We make no apology for returning to a subject which 
was discussed a few months back when the political sky 
was comparatively clear ; and the subsequent treatment of 
which in Parliament makes an appeal to the country itself 
more than ever necessary. 

It is well known that to a particular school the colonies 
appear only a burden. Young communities cost money 
before the resources of a new country can be adequately 
developed. We are informed that to part with them will 
be an immediate relief to the English taxpayer, that we 
can employ our people at home by developing our manu- 
factures ; and that the government, untroubled with the 
responsibility of defending our remote and scattered de- 
pendencies, can provide cheaply, easily, and certainly for 
our own security at home. The promulgation of these 
opinions has created much uneasiness in the colonies them- 
selves, whose own almost universal wish is to remain under 
the sovereignty of the Queen. At home also to some per- 
sons they have seemed singularly shallow. Without colo- 
nies the natural growth of our population must overflow 
into foreign countries. The indifference with which we 
have allowed Irish emigration to drift into America has 
created an element dangerously hostile to us across the 
Atlantic, while it has embittered the already alienated feel- 
ings with which we are regarded in Ireland itself In our 
own emigrating artisans, if we allow them passively to be- 
come parts of another community, we are losing elements 
of strength which might be of more worth to us than the 
gold mines of Ballarat. 



286 The Colonies once more. 

The present government, however, has been suspected 
of secretly favoring the views of the separatists. They 
were several times called on during the session of last year 
to explain their real views, and the tone which they have 
taken in their replies indicates at any rate most signally 
the estimate which they have formed of the political mag- 
nitude of the question. Lord Granville has again and 
again repudiated all intention of shaking off the colonies. 
He insists that the policy which he pursues is that which 
on the whole gives most satisfaction to the colonists them- 
selves, and tends more than any other which could be pur- 
sued to secure their attachment. He has said also, and 
whenever challenged he has repeated, as if with a con- 
sciousness that he was wronged by the suspicions enter- 
tained of him, that he admits the duty in case of war of 
defending the colonies against aggression with the whole 
force of the empire. The assurance is good in itself, but 
it is little to the point. No one suspects the government 
of meditating treason, and it would be nothing less than 
treason willfully to abandon the jjrotection of any part of 
her Majesty's dominions. But whereas there are two pos- 
sible colonial policies — one to regard them as integral 
parts of the British Empire, as an inheritance of the 
nation in which the crowded hive at home may have room 
to expand and strengthen itself, in which English families 
may receive portions of the land belonging to us in which 
to take root though circumstances deny it to them at 
home ; the other, to concentrate ourselves in these islands, 
to educate the colonies in self-dependence, that at the 
earliest moment they may themselves sever the links 
which bind them to us — of these two policies it is believed 
that the government deliberately prefer the second, .and 
nothing that Lord Granville or any other member of the 
"Cabinet has said upon the subject leads us to suppose that 
the belief is unfounded. A few words would have sufficed 
to remove the uneasiness, but those words have not been 
spoken. 



The Colonies once more. 287 

Lord Granville is transferred to another department, but 
it is evident that there is to be no change in the colonial 
policy. Lord Kimberley's language is identical with his 
predecessor's. It is quite certain that in the opinion of 
Mr. Gladstone's Administration the colonies are rather 
elements of weakness to us than of strength, that they be- 
long to themselves rather than to us, and that any endeavor 
on our part to develop their resources or transport the 
overflow of our people there will be wasted effort and 
money thrown away. 

We say nothing of the withdrawal of the troops. That 
is an entirely secondary matter. No civilized nation in the 
world pays so much for its army as we do, and in none is 
there so miserable a result ; and if there were any chance 
that our scanty regiments would be maintained in full 
efficiency at home, and would not be allowed to dwindle 
into skeletons under the blight of our military mismanage- 
ment, it might be wise to concentrate at the heart of the 
empire such means of defense as we possess. The self- 
governed colonies are perfectly capable of taking care of 
themselves, and they will defend to the last each their own 
portion of the British Empire, if they may be assured that 
the empire is to continue to exist. But the entire drift of 
the action of the Colonial Office points to a desire on our 
part that as soon as possible they should rid us of all re- 
sponsibility for them. Our statesmen avow in their con- 
duct what in words they are still compelled to disclaim. 
Our leading colonists are not invited to a share in the 
established dignities of the empire. They are not made 
members of the Privy Council. They are not admitted to 
the Bath, still less to the high distinction of the Garter. 
A new order is created especially as the reward of colonial 
merit. A difference in its flag is forced upon or allowed 
to Victoria. The unanimous desire of the Australians for 
the annexation of the Fiji Islands is refused ; as if to goad 
them into separate action on their own account, lest those 



288 The Colonies once more. 

islands should be aj^propriated for a naval or a penal sta- 
tion by some other power. When the Dominion of Canada 
was proclaimed, the government organs declared, with no 
uncertain voice, that British North America might now be 
independent when it pleased. The present Governor- 
General, though he afterwards explained away his words, 
expressed a distinct wish that the gift of independence 
might be soon accepted. It is incredible that he would 
have dared to use such words unless they had been 
prompted from home. The late Governor, when Lord 
Granville disclaimed any desire to part with Canada, and 
denied that his policy tended towards separation, said in 
his place in the House of Lords that it undoubtedly had 
such a tendency, and for that reason he hoped the govern- 
ment would persevere. The new knighthood was be- 
stowed ostentatiously on a Canadian statesman who had 
avowed publicly his desire that Canada should be annexed 
to the United States. It was precisely as if Mr. Smith 
O'Brien had been made a peer when he went to Paris to 
ask the provisional government to undertake the pro- 
tection of Ireland. The proposed confederation of the 
Australian colonies and New Zealand has been treated 
pointedly as the birth of a new nationality. All this can 
bear but one interpretation. Such confederations in them- 
selves may be good things or bad. They need not necessa- 
rily involve a separation from England, but the separation 
is what the party at present in power desire to promote, 
and the purpose is but faintly concealed in a few reluctant 
and partial concessions to public opinion, the guarantee 
of a loan to New Zealand, and the delay in the complete 
evacuation of the Canadian Dominion tUl the Red River 
disturbances shall have been composed. 

We do not believe that such a policy can be approved by 
the country in general. Were the issue fairly before the 
people it would be instantly repudiated. The fear is rather 
that they will look on inattentively, supposing that all is 



The Colonies once more. 289 

going well, till the miscliief is consummated. It will then 
be past remedy, and the vengeance which will assuredly fall 
on the authors of it will be a poor compensation for an 
irreparable disaster. We choose the present moment, there- 
fore, when the position of England must be causing seri- 
ous thought to every one who is capable of understanding 
it, to recall attention to a question which appears to us to be 
one of life or death. 

It has two branches, which have unfortunately been ar- 
gued apart, though, in fact, they cannot be separated : the 
political relations of the colonies with the mother country, 
and the possibility or the desirableness of a sustained and 
methodical emigration supported in part by the State in the 
general interests of the nation. These two subjects are fac- 
tors in the same problem, for the only practicable means at 
present of attaching the colonies to us is by feeding them 
intelligently with emigrants, who leave England grateful for 
the assistance which removes them from our surfeited towns 
to a situation where they can have a fairer prospect of a 
healthy and useful existence. No one in his senses proposes 
to reclaim for the discredited Colonial Office the control over 
dependencies which the home officials do not care to under- 
stand, and in the welfare of which they have no genuine in- 
terest. The object is to create or foster those natural links 
of affinity between Great Britain and her distant provinces 
which, to the disgrace of our political sagacity, we have per- 
mitted to grow unchecked between Ireland and the United 
States of America. At present, from causes far from hon- 
orable to us, those who emigrate on their own account pre- 
fer any flag to ours. The natural outflow is to New York, 
and every family which settles in the republic carries with 
it enmity to the home from which it has been driven, and 
leaves the germs of disloyalty behind in its kindred. The 
hope of those who see these things and dread their conse- 
quences is to turn the stream, before it becomes too late, to 
prevent the spread to England and Scotland of the same 
19 



290 ^ The Colonies once more. 

process which in Ireland has been so fertile in mischief; to 
relieve our towns of a plethora of people which is breeding 
physical and moral disease, and in furnishing our colonies 
with the supply which they most need, to give them an in- 
terest in maintaining their connection with us. 

That a great State emigration is in itself possible, possi- 
ble in the sense that there are no insurmountable obstacles 
created by the nature of things, and that if carried into 
effect in union with the colonial governments it would, 
beyond all other means, tend to bind them to us, even Lord 
Granville himself would hardly deny. The extent of our 
dependencies is so vast, and the wealth waiting to be drawn 
out there by human industry so enormous, that with proper 
provisions and preparations they could receive among them 
at present at least a quarter of a million of our people annu- 
ally. The number for whom work could be found would 
increase in geometrical proportion. The Irish who go to 
the States send for their families ; the English would neces- 
sarily do the same ; and the strain upon the State, which 
even at first would be comparatively slight, would in a short 
time disappear. That the emigration question, therefore, 
and the political question should have been argued sepa- 
rately, has been a serious misfortune. It has enabled those 
who wish to keep things as they are to break the sticks 
each by itself, to represent emigration to our colonies as of 
no special consequence to us because our relations with them 
are uncertain, and to argue the impossibility of drawing 
those relations closer from experience of the bad results in 
the past of the mother country's interference. 

In the early part of last spring a deputation waited on the 
Prime Minister to represent the distress in the manufactur- 
ing towns, and to recommend the establishment of an emi- 
gration system at the cost of the State. The Prime Minis- 
ter gave a courteous but hesitating answer. He left it to 
be implied that he was himself in favor of the deputation's 
object, but that he must consult the Colonial Minister and 



The Colonies once more. 291 

the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He spoke, perhaps, in 
some irony, for the opinions of Mr. Lowe and Lord Gran- 
ville might have been anticipated without difficulty. Lord 
Carnarvon followed in the House of Lords. There had 
been an expectation that a subject of so much importance 
would have been alluded to in the Speech from the Throne, 
and the absence of it was significantly noticed by Lord 
Cairns. Lord Cairns, however, left England immediately 
after. Lord Carnarvon, as an ex-Colonial Minister, took 
upon himself to represent those who were dissatisfied with 
Lord Granville's jDroceedings ; and he had an opportunity 
of rising above the position of a party leader, and treating 
the matter on the broadest grounds of statesmanship. Lord 
Russell, in the prefiice to an edition of his Speeches, had in- 
troduced a censure on Lord Granville so emphatic as to im- 
ply that, if his policy produced its natural result, though he 
escaped impeachment, he would deserve and receive eternal 
infamy. Lord Carnarvon, however, confined himself to 
strictly political criticism. He evaded the larger bearings 
of the subject. He spoke merely as a member of the Op- 
position, anxious to avail himself of an ojDening to attack 
the government in power. He gave Lord Granville an 
easy victory, for he had himself in office been no wiser 
than his antagonist. Lord Salisbury and Lord Derby were 
silent, and the discussion dropj^ed as an unsuccessful party 
move. 

A petition, very largely signed, from the working men of 
the metropolis, was afterwards addressed to the Queen. It 
spoke the language of unbewitched common sense. It set 
out that England was overcrowded, that work for the peo- 
ple was not to be found at home, that they were loyal to the 
Crown and wished to remain British subjects, and that her 
Majesty jDOSsessed dominions in other parts of the world 
where there was room and to spare for them. They there- 
fore besought her Majesty to close her ears to those 
who advised her to part with those dominions, to declare 



292 The Colonies once more. 

emphatically that the colonies were integral parts of the 
empire, and that the state would assist those who were 
willing to remove to them. 

This petition was received by the Home Minister in be- 
half of the Queen, and a reply was returned more than usu- 
ally characteristic of what Mr. Dickens called the " Circum- 
locution Othce." Sympathy was of course expressed with 
the distress of the people. The value of emigration was 
ardently acknowledged. The government, the petitioners 
were assured, would do everything in its power to promote 
their welfare. There were, however, as Mr. Bruce con- 
tended, laws of nature which it was hojjeless and idle to re- 
sist. Emigration, like all other human movements, obeyed 
tendencies which were paramount and inexorable. Those 
who left their old homes in search of new, selected, necessa- 
rily, those countries to which access was most easy, where 
the climate was most favorable, and the land richest and 
most readily obtained. The United States, he said, pos- 
sessed advantages in these res23ects suj^erior to those of the 
English colonies, and therefore into the United States the 
main tide of emigration from these islands must continue 
to flow. 

That Mr. Bruce's view of these advantages is in itself in- 
correct, and that other causes operate besides these supposed 
laws of Nature, may be proved by the increasing pressure 
of the American population upon the border of the districts 
between Chicago and the Red River, which are as fertile as 
any lands in the world, and which, it is notorious, would, if 
annexed to the Union, be immediately and densely occupied. 
The Americans are kept out by the British flag. In them 
it seems the sense of nationality is something not so wholly 
unsubstantial. We are inclined to think, too, that in assum- 
ing allegiance to be a mere word, and personal interest their 
solitary principle of action, Mr. Bruce is passing a satirical 
comment on the character of the English which they have 
not yet deserved. Political economy, though sujireme in 



The Colonies once more. 293 

the House of Commons, has not so far entirely superseded 
more old-fashioned motives ; nor are we as a people so com- 
pletely different from all other nations in the world, present 
or past, that it is a matter of indifference to us whether we 
do or do not become subjects of an alien j^ower. The Rus- 
sians do not emigrate at all, though their climate is not less 
severe than that of British North America. The sense of 
home is always strongest in the inhabitants of northern 
latitudes, and with it the more robust qualities which are 
developed by their more energetic habits of life. The 
northern nations of the old world have been larger-limbed 
and stouter hearted than the children of those effeminate 
regions where the soil yields its harvest without labor, and 
warmth generates indolence and languor. * The future of 
America it is likely will resemble in this respect the past 
of Europe, and the hardy race which will hereafter domi- 
nate in that vast continent will probably be the men bred 
in New England and in that Dominion in which Mr. Bruce 
tells us it is impossible to persuade English emigrants to 
remain. 

Mr. Gladstone, similarly taking up the other side of the 
matter in the House of Commons, stated as a reason why 
a closer union with the colonies was impossible, that the 
nearest of them, Canada, was divided from us by Nature, by 
a waste of rolling water — and that what God had placed 
asunder it was in vain for man to try to join. The objec- 
tion can be forgotten when there is a desire to overlook it. 
New Zealand is at least as difficult of access from Australia, 
yet a South Pacific confederation is considered not only not 
as an impossibility, but is recommended as feasible and 
good. The ocean of which the Prime Minister speaks so 
fearfully is a highway, almost a railway, made ready by 
Nature to our hands. To a nation like the English, whose 
strength is on the water, whose wealth is in its trade. Na- 
ture herself could have devised no fairer means of commu- 
nication. Every fraction of the empire is easily accessible, 



294 The Colonies once more. 

and to speak of Canada as necessarily separate from us be- 
cause tlie Atlantic intervenes is less reasonable than it 
would have been seventy years ago to make St. George's 
Channel an objection to the union with Ireland. 

But it was reserved for another minister to speak the last 
and most instructive words as to the opinion of the present 
Cabinet. Mr. Torrens, on the 17th of June, called the at- 
tention of the House of Commons to the want of employ- 
ment in the great towns, and the increasing distress of the 
people. He pointed to the effect of voluntary emigration 
as tending, if left to itself, to strengthen rival nations at the 
expense of England. He showed that the movement so 
much to be dreaded had actually commenced ; that the Eng- 
lish artisans were already following largely the Irish exam- 
ple, and that of 167,000 working men who had left this 
country during the past year, 133,000 had become citizens 
of the United States. He invited the government to assist 
those among them who were willing to remain Englishmen, 
still to preserve their allegiance-. He recommended the 
establishment of cheap lines of communication with the colo- 
nies — cheap ships as we had cheap railway trains — and to 
enable any man who by contributing part of his passage 
money would give a proof that he was not a pauper, to 
remove in preference to Australia or to Canada. The adop- 
tion of such a scheme, he said, would, more than any other 
measure, attach the colonies to us, while the development of 
the colonies would as certainly be the surest means of increas- 
ing English trade. Lord George Hamilton spoke on the 
same side, but scarcely with the same effectiveness. He in- 
jured his argument by a side blow at the Irish Land Bill, and 
a proposition imperial in its conception was degraded into a 
House of Commons movement intended only to embarrass 
the government. In so plain a matter, however, it was 
difficult to go very far wrong, and his main arguments, 
like those of Mr. Torrens, expressed the convictions of 
almost every reasonable man. The President of the Poor 



The Colonies once more. 295 

Law Board replied ; and his speech will hereafter be looked 
back upon as we look back upon other strange utter- 
ances of men whom the tide of politics at critical times has 
drifted into power. Mr. Goschen insisted that no case had 
been made out for government interference. The supposed 
distress had been exaggerated. The people had been suf- 
fering slightly fi'om one of those accidental fluctuations to 
which the commerce of the country was periodically liable, 
but the worst part of the trial was already over. Trade was 
fast reviving. The prosperity of the working classes was 
returning, and as an infallible index of improvement he 
stated, amidst the cheers of the House, that they were con- 
suming increasing quantities of beer, gin, and tobacco. 
The population was growing — growing at the rate of 
300,000 a year — but England was not yet filled, and there 
was yet ample room for them all. The mills and mines 
would find them employment. The great towns would 
grow bigger. Great Britain tended more and more to be- 
come the workshop of the world, and the limit, if limit there 
was, to the capacity for internal expansion was still far ofif 
and invisible. Those who wished to emigrate at their own 
cost were of course at liberty to go, but Mr. Goschen pro- 
tested against doing violence to the acknowledged principles 
of political economy by attempting to divert the outflow to 
one country rather than another. The United States would 
not like it, and that was suflicient. 

Plainer language of its kind has not been heard in Par- 
liament within the present century, and the reformed House 
of Commons illustrated its origin and justified Mr. Lowe's 
prediction of the effects to be anticipated from an extension 
of the suffi-age, by the delight with which it listened. 

All was well with the English working man because he 
was drinking more beer and gin. The government was 
not at liberty to assist English subjects from one part of 
the Queen's dominions to another because it might happen 
to displease a foreign government. The last argument, we 



296 The Colonies once more. 

were told afterwards by the Times ^ " went to the root of 
the whole difficulty " — truly a remarkable confession. 

It is not to be supposed that such arguments as these 
express the real conviction of men so able as Mr. Gladstone, 
Mr. Bruce, or even Mr. Goschen. Their off-hand answers 
may have served the purpose as tricks of defense to parry 
the attacks upon them, but the true ground of their resolu- 
tion must be looked for deeper down. They must have con- 
vinced themselves that it is safe and desirable to allow the 
multitude of people which is now crowded into this island 
to become denser than it is — the feverish race for wealth, 
which is at present the sole motive-power of English indus- 
try, to grow yet hotter and more absorbing. We are to 
reap the harvest of manufacture while our coal and iron 
hold out, and to leave the future to care for itself. Mr. 
Gladstone is not a cynic, still less is he in himself a mere 
worshipper of wealth. With one side of his mind he shares 
in the old convictions of wise and serious men. He " thinks 
nobly of the soul." He believes with Plato — at any rate 
he thinks that he believes — that the first aim of a well- 
ordered commonwealth should be the moral improvement 
of the human beings who constitute it. He would admit 
that the test of a wholesome condition of things in any 
country is not the balance-sheet, but the character of the 
people ; that sobriety, prudence, honesty, chastity, fear of 
God, and a physical existence healthy and happy because 
natural and good, are better than all the cotton bales from 
all the mills of Lancashire. We must suppose him, there- 
fore, to think seriously that the children of an English arti- 
san, dragged up among the gutters of Sheffield or Spitalfields 
amidst gin and beer and their detestable concomitants, have 
as good a chance of growing up into healthy and M^orthy 
manhood as under the free sky of Canada or New Zealand, 
where the land is to be had for the asking, and waits only 
the spade to yield its crops. These may be sentimental 
considerations, but Mr. Gladstone, at any rate, is not insen- 



The Colonies once more. 297 

sible to them. 'V\niat can be the arguments, then, which 
are outweighing them in his mind ? 

It is easy to understand the cheers of the House of 
Commons. It is a house of rich men. Each Parliament 
that meets is richer than its predecessor. The present — 
returned by the enlarged constituency — is the wealthiest 
which has ever sat in England. To a rich man no country 
can be more agreeable, no system of things more con- 
venient or delightful, than that in which we live. Inevi- 
tably, therefore, all that is going on will appear to him to 
be reasonable and just. The noble Lords — I speak of 
some, not yet, happily, of all — are grown wise in their 
generation, and acknowledge the excellence of what they 
once despised. The growth of manufactures has doubled, 
quintupled, multiplied in some instances a hundredfold the 
value of their land. Their rents maintain them in splendor 
undreamt of in earlier generations, which has now become 
a necessity of existence. They have their half-dozen parks 
and palaces ; their houses in London, their moors in Scot- 
land, their yachts at Cowes. Their sons have their hunters 
at Melton, their racing stables, their battues. In the dead 
season of sport they fall back to recruit their manliness 
with pigeon shooting at Hurlingham. These things have 
become a second nature to them, in which they live and 
move and have their being. Their grandftithers cared for 
the English commonwealth. It is hard to say what some 
of these high persons care for except idle luxury. To 
them, therefore, the system most commends itself which 
most raises the value of their property. The more densely 
England is peopled the greater grows the value of their 
acres without labor to themselves, and they well under- 
stand how to keep at arm's length the inconveniences of 
the pressure. That such as they, therefore, should look 
with little favor on emigration is no more than might be 
expected. Still less favorably will those regard it who 
rank next to them, and who aspire to rise into their order 



298 The Colonies once more. 

— the great employers of labor. To the manufacturers 
abundance of labor means cheap labor, and cheap labor is 
the secret of their wealth, the condition of their prosperity, 
the means by which they undersell other nations and com- 
mand a monopoly of the world's markets. Political 
economy, the employer's gospel, preaches a relation be- 
tween themselves and their workmen which means to them 
the largest opportunity of profit with the smallest recogni- 
tion of obligation to those upon whose labor they grow 
rich. Slavery, beyond its moral enormity, was condemned 
economically as extravagant. The slave born on the plan- 
tation was maintained while he was too young to work, at 
his master's expense. His master had charge of him when 
he was sick, and in his old age when he could do no more 
he was fed, clothed, and lodged for the remainder of his 
days. The daily wages system, besides having the advan- 
tage of being a free contract, leaves the master at the 
day's end discharged of further responsibilities. He is 
bound to his workman only so long as it is his interest to 
retain him. While trade flourishes and profits are large he 
gives him full employment. When a dead season super- 
venes he draws in his sails. He lies by till better times 
return, and discharges his hands to live upon their savings, 
or ultimately be supported by the poor-rate till he needs 
their services again. The State, therefore, in assisting 
emigration interferes to rob the rich man of his living. 
" Keep the people at home," said a noble Lord, " we shaii 
want them when trade revives." Poor-rates can be borne 
with, for those who are themselves little more than paupers 
share the burden of them. Even trades-unions and strikes 
can be borne with so long as the men confine themselves 
to higgling over the wages rate. Hunger will bring them 
to terms in time. Anything but a large emigration, for 
with emigration wages will rise in earnest, and profits 
lessen. The man by whose toil the master has prospered 
has gone where his toil is for himself, where he is taking 



The Colonies once more, 299 

root upon the land, a sturdy member of the commonwealth, 
and the home market is relieved of his competition. The 
nation is richer for the change so long as he remains an 
English subject, but the capitalist employer loses a per- 
centage of his profits. 

Thus arguments of all kinds are pressed into the service 
to blind the working man to his obvious interest, and pre- 
vent him from demanding what if he asks for resolutely 
cannot be refused. He is told that emigration supported 
by the State will lay an additional burden on the already 
heavy-laden taxpayers ; that we shall be robbing the opera- 
tives who stay at home of part of their hard-won earnings, 
and making a present to others of what it is not ours to 
give. The objection is valid against the poor-rates as they 
are at present levied. There is something monstrous in 
compelling the petty shopkeeper, barely able to keep his 
own head above water, to contribute to the support of the 
discharged workman from whose labor when employed the 
shopkeeper drew no penny of advantage. But the advo- 
cates of State emigration do not contemplate a tax which 
shall touch the poor. The annual savings of this country 
are estimated by Lord Overstone at something near a 
hundred and forty million. Mr. Gladstone points to the 
fifteen millions contributed voluntarily by the Irish peas- 
antry for their own exodus, and asks who can be so 
sanguine as to dream of any such sum being raised by rate 
for the emigration of the English working men? The 
fifteen millions are an index, on one side, of the affectionate 
feelings of the Irish people. One active member of a 
family is sent to America by a subscription among the rest. 
Out of the abundance which he finds there he sets apart a 
sufficient sum to bring his brothers and sisters after him. 
This is the fairer aspect of it, but it is not all. Another 
and a darker passion animates the Celtic peasant to his 
efforts and his sacrifices, and that is hatred of England — 
hatred of the country which he charges unjustly with hav- 



300 The Colonies once more. 

ing been the cause of his misery, but which may be more 
fairly challenged for having attempted so little to remove 
it. The consequences of our long neglect of Ireland we 
have already experienced to our sorrow. The Church Act 
and the Land Act are the price which we have already had 
to pay for Fenianism, and they are probably not the last 
payment. If we allow an English voluntary exodus in the 
same spirit as the Irish, and directed to the same quarter, 
a statesman who can look beyond the next five years or 
ten has cause to tremble at the too certain consequences. 
Suppose that out of these hundred and forty millions a 
fourteenth part was taken to divert the stream to Australia 
and Canada and the Cape, to carry off annually a quarter 
of a million people, settle them on vacant lands, maintain 
them for the first year till the first crop was grown ; if 
instead of letting them become so many thousand hostile 
citizens of the American Republic, we preserved them as 
loyal citizens of the British Empire, and secured with it the 
regard and gratitude of the working millions whom they 
left at home ; if the masses of the English people were 
made to see at last that those in power were not wholly 
forgetful of them ; it would be a not unwise investment if 
only as an insurance for the rest. What is the use of 
enormous wealth if we cannot defend it ? and how can we 
defend it unless the whole nation has an interest in the 
stability of the country ? 

I shall be told that the cost will fall on the operatives at 
last; for capital requires investment. The hundred and 
forty millions provide fresh labor, and find fresh multitudes 
in food. It is not wholly so, for more and more of Eng- 
lish savings goes abroad in loans to foreign governments, 
in maintaining French and Prussian armies, or finds labor, 
not for English artisans, but for Russians, Americans, or 
Turks. But the money that remains at home does not 
improve the condition of our people who remain upon our 
hands ; it only multiplies their number. It merely creates 



The Colonies once more, 301 

fresh manufactories, fresh workshops, fresh courts and 
alleys in our huge sweltering towns, and swells further the 
vast and weltering tide of human life in a space already 
grown too strait for it. Mr. Goschen ridicules the idea of 
a maximum. Where, he asks, is the line to be drawn? 
When can it be said that England is so full of men that it 
can safely hold no more ? The maximum we should say 
had been reached when the population had passed beyond 
all rational control ; when, if religion and morals have not 
orown to be unmeaning words, the population has swollen 
into a bulk which is the despair of minister and priest, of 
the schoolmaster and even the policemen ; when hundreds 
of thousands are added annually to our numbers to grow 
up heathens in a country calling itself Christian. We 
should point to that very torrent of drugged beer and 
poisoned gin, the increased consumption of which the House 
of Commons seems to regard with such admirable com- 
placency. Let but a severe war, or any one of the thou- 
sand calamities which Nature has at its command, cripple or 
paralyze trade for a few successive years, and half our 
people will be left to immediate starvation, and to the furi- 
ous passions which hunger will necessarily breed. If 
statesmen wait for other signs, the signs may come at last in 
the shape of catastrophes in which it will be too late to cry 
out for a remedy. There is, however, another symptom 
among us which we commend to the consideration of poli- 
ticians who have not parted with their senses. 

A few years ago the English public was shocked by the 
discovery of an institution at Torquay for the murder of 
babies. A woman named Charlotte Windsor undertook, 
for certain small sums of money, the charge of inconven- 
ient infants, promising so to provide for them that their 
parents should be no longer troubled with the burden of 
their maintenance. The provision was a pillow or a hand- 
kerchief pressed upon their mouths, and a grave in Torbay 
or on the hill-side. The murderess was detected, but 



302 The Colonies once more. 

escaped execution by a legal subterfuge, and the example 
remained either to deter or encourage further experiments 
in the same line of business. Two other women were 
recently brought before the Lambeth Police Court on 
a charge somewhat similar. Charlotte Windsor was old. 
Many years had passed since she had " given suck," or seen 
a baby smiling on her face. Such restraint as animal emo- 
tions can exert no longer served as a check on her calcu- 
lated ferocity. These women were still of an age to be 
themselves mothers. One of them, the elder, had a child 
of her own at the breast. Their proceedings, therefore, 
were of a milder kind, and will save them too from the 
penalty which the Torquay assassin escaped so nearly. 
They put advertisements in the newspapers offering a home 
and a mother's care to any child whose parents desired to 
part with it ; and for the small sum of five pounds they 
undertook to bring it up as their own, and educate it for 
service or a trade. The infants which passed into their 
hands were not smothered, but were allowed to die for 
want of nourishment, or were assisted out of the world by 
laudanum, lime water, or paregoric elixir. When death 
was evidently near, but before it arrived, they were carried 
away, the servants in the house being told that they were 
going back to their friends, and the next thing that was 
heard was that little dead bodies had been found by the 
police lying about in baskets or brown paper parcels. 

Much natural horror is expressed at the exposure of so 
infamous a trade, but the trade itself is a mere bubble on 
the surface, an indication merely of a pervading poison at 
work everywhere in the under-current of society. The 
population of this country increases at the rate of some- 
thing like a thousand a day. The increase would be nearer 
two thousand a day if the average mortality among the 
children of the poor was no greater than among the more 
prosperous classes. Vast numbers of the human creatures 
brought into life in this island die before they are five 



The Colonies once more. 303 

years old, who would have survived with adequate food, 
dotting, shelter, and care. We may be told that it is a 
law of nature. One pair of magpies would fill the globe 
in a century if four out of five that are hatched were not 
starved when they left the nest. Society cannot provide 
for the issue of imj)rovident marriages or illicit concu- 
binage. We have more children already on our hands 
than we know what to do with, and must be grateful that 
we are relieved of their presence by causes for which we 
are not responsible. All civilized nations have experienced 
the same difficulty, and dealt with it as they could. The 
Greeks and Romans exposed their superfluous babies. 
The Chinese do the same at present. The English, as a 
Christian people, leave it to nature. Child-murder remains 
a crime, but we none the less congratulate ourselves that 
an abstraction which we can disguise under the name of a 
law provides a relief for our overburdened system. Natu- 
ral selection decides who shall live. The robust survive to 
contribute to the sinews of society. The sickly drop off, 
and are spared a struggle to which they would have been 
unequal. 

The enlightened persons who form public opinion in 
these matters do not usually belong to the classes which 
suffer, or they might acquiesce in these arrangements with 
less equanimity. Their children for the most part live, and 
assist to keep down the averages. We can be wonderfully 
submissive to laws .of nature while others only suffer from 
them. When our own shoes pinch we discover that with 
a little effort the shape can be altered. It is a law of 
nature that the strong shall prey upon the weak. It is a 
law of nature that if a house is not drained, the occupants 
of it shall be in danger of typhus fever. But there are very 
few laws indeed affecting man which are not conditional, 
and the chief purpose of human society is to control the 
brutal and elemental forces by reason and good sense. If 
the country cannot afford to rear more than a certain num- 



304 The Colonies once more. 

ber of children, means ought to be attempted to prevent 
them from coming into existence. The infinite wretcMed- 
ness produced by the present state of things ought not to 
pass for nothing. It has become not uncommon in these 
days to hear of miserable fathers and mothers, unable alike 
to support their families or see them starve, destroying 
their children and themselves, and making an end of their 
troubles thus. Again, if we please, we may call in Provi- 
dence. The classes which suffer most are toughest-hearted. 
The poor old Devonshire woman with eight hungry mouths 
about her, and nine shillings a week to feed them, looks 
with envy on the Lord's mercy to her neighbors whose 
babies die in arms, and sighs out, " We never have no 
luck ; " but this callousness itself is frightful, and is in itself 
one of the causes of the enormous mortality. 

Put it as we will, half the natural increase of the popu- 
lation of this country is made away with by preventible 
causes — by causes which are prevented in the more fa- 
vored classes of society, and might therefore, so far as the 
nature of things is responsible, be prevented in all. Part 
of the destruction is caused by positive crime ; part by 
unavoidable distress ; part, and by far the largest part, by 
indifference and neglect. Omitting for the present those 
who are starved and those who are murdered, and confining 
ourselves to the great bulk of infant mortality, let us ask 
whether any means exist by which it can be successfully 
encountered. Encountered, I presume it ought to be if 
possible ; we have not yet wholly outgrown the idea that 
there is something in human life more sacred than in the 
lives of animals, and a murrain among the cattle is consid- 
ered a sufficient subject for an Act of Parliament. Men 
say impatiently that the parents are to blame ; if the father 
spent the money which he wastes at the ginsho23 in provid- 
ing better clothes and food for his family, this alone would 
save half of those who die ; but duty is a matter of con- 
science, and you cannot make people moral by statute. 



The Colonies once more. 305 

We commend tlie consideration to the better thoughts of 
our governors. Children, however, are the property of 
the State as well as of their parents. Were it a question 
of sheep and oxen, we should look about for some other 
answer. Unhappily, the supply of human creatures is in 
excess of the demand as English society is now consti- 
tuted ; and there is no interest, public or private, in keep- 
ino- more babies than necessary alive. The fathers and 
mothers find them a burden, and statesmen with their 
hands full of other matters look on unconcerned. The 
neglect on both sides is monstrous, unnatural, and requires 
explanation; and the explanation lies in the organization 
or disorganization of modern industry; in tendencies at 
work alike in town and country, which increase in force in 
geometrical proportion with the extension of the modern 
conditions of labor. The artisans in the great cities, the 
agricultural laborers driven out of the old-fashioned ham- 
lets and huddled into villages, are heaped together in 
masses where wholesome life is impossible. Their wages 
may be nominally rising, sufficiently, perhaps, to keep pace 
with the rise of prices, but wages form only a small part 
of the matter. The agricultural laborer lodges now many 
miles from his work. He leaves his home in the early 
morning, he returns to it late at night. The ground in 
town has become so enormously valuable that the fictory 
hand and the mechanic can afford but a single room, at the 
best two. When his day's toil is over he has no tempta- 
tion to return to the squalid nest which is all that society 
can allow him, and he finds the beer house and the gin 
palace a grateful exchange. The wife, obliged herself to 
work to supply the empty platters, must be absent also 
many hours from home ; she has no leisure to attend to her 
children, and they grow up as they can, to fall a prey to 
disease and accidents which lie in wait for them at every 
turn. 

A stranger, travelling on a railway from end to end of 
20 



306 The Colonies oyice more. 

England, would think that there was no civilized country in 
the world where there was so much elbow room. He sees 
enormous extents of f)asture land and undulating fallows 
cultivated to the highest point of productiveness, with only 
at intervals symptoms of human habitatioiis. He sees the 
palaces of the noble and the wealthy set in the midst of 
magnificent parks, studded with forest trees and sheets of 
ornamental water, or maintained for game preserves and 
ai'tificial wildernesses. In Scotland he sees whole counties 
kept as deer forests and grouse moors, that the great of the 
land may have their six weeks' enjoyment there in the 
autumn. Room enough and to spare he would naturally 
think there must be in a land where ground could be de- 
voted so lavishly to mere amusement. If he is a guest at 
one of these grand mansions he will be told, as Mr. Go- 
schen says, that over-population is a dream. He gazes 
across the broad-reaching lawns, or down the stately 
avenues. Miles distant he sees the belt of forest which 
bounds the domain and holds the outer world at bay. His 
host tells him with pride that from his own coal and iron 
are made the rails which shall link together the provinces 
of India, that there is no limit to English production, to 
English wealth, to English greatness. True enough, there 
never was in any country such productiveness, never any 
system which extracted larger material results from the 
loins and sinews of human beings, and never any which 
recognized less obligation to those beings by whose toil all 
this wealth has been created. 

What would you have ? it is impatiently asked. What 
ought to be done ? I should say, at any rate do not let the 
present condition of things develop further till you have 
learnt better how to govern it, and how to apportion better 
the moral and material proceeds of it. Remove as many 
of the people annually as will make room for the natural 
increase. You will then have breathing time to look about 
you, and overtake the confusion which is every day becom- 



The Qolonies once more. 307 

ing now more intolerable. At best you will succeed but 
imperfectly in reducing the numbers, for as you relieve the 
pressure at home many of the children who now die will 
survive. The employer may take heart. When we have 
done our utmost we shall make no depletion in the labor 
market. But the rate at which our moral disorders are 
growing will at least be checked. If nothing else, we shall 
have saved a moiety of infants from a miserable death ; 
and if England itself is to remain the land of those burning 
contrasts which are now so appalling, we shall be planting 
a race of Englishmen elsewhere who may grow up under 
the happier conditions which belonged to our fathers. 
The aged oak may decay at the heart and yet still stand 
for centuries, when it is fed by healthy juices from its ex- 
tremities. Two alternatives lie palpably open to us at this 
moment. Shall there be a British Empire of which the 
inexhaustible resources shall be made available for the 
whole commonwealth ? Shall there be tens of millions of 
British subjects rooted in different jjarts of the globe, loyal 
all to one crown, and loyal to each other, because sharing 
equally and fairly in the common patrimony ? Or shall 
there be an England of rich men in which the multitude 
are sacrificed to the luxuries of the few, an England of 
which the pleasant parks and woodlands are the preserves 
of the great ; and the millions, the creators of the wealth, 
swill and starve amidst dirt and disease and vice and 
drunkenness and infanticide ? 

Every day makes it more clear that the true objection 
to emigration, the true cause of all this feeling so lately 
broken out among us that England is sufficient for itself, 
and that the colonies are a burden to it, is the interest of 
the landowners and the employers of labor. The time 
may come, perhaps may be very near, when their wealth 
may not be tenable on those terms. If we are put to the 
test we shall require all our strength, and it will be well 
for us if we have a nation to fall back upon whose loyalty 



308 The Colonies once more. 

we have deserved, and whose temiiers we may safely trust. 
But we cannot have everything. We cannot have patriot- 
ism in the people, and political economy the sole rule of 
statesmanship. Money will not save us. We cannot buy 
off invasion as the failing Roman Empire tried to buy off 
the barbarians. We must rely upon the sentimental 
virtues, and we must take means to foster those virtues. 
If we tell the jjeople in the name of our government that 
they and theirs have no inheritance in the land of their 
fathers, that the world is a great market where they must 
higgle for themselves, and make their own bargains, the 
mill hand or flirm laborer will be a mere fool if he risk his 
life or bear taxation for a country which disowns concern 
in him. 

We are not particularly sanguine that a large imperial 
policy will receive consideration, at this time especially, 
when immediate peril seems to be no longer at our doors. 
Were we even in positive danger it is unlikely that the 
wealthy part of England would consent to a self-denying 
ordinance which would demand immediate sacrifices ; and 
yet ten millions would be a cheap investment if it secured 
the attachment of the colonies, and taught our people tliat 
the commonwealth, in the old sense of that most meaning 
word, was still the care of English statemen. After all, 
what are those hundred and forty millions of savings ? 
They are savhigs from what? The whole of it is the 
produce of English labor, the earnings of the working men 
themselves, however directed by intelligence, and assisted 
by capital. It is no very great thing to ask that a portion 
of this great sum should be expended in their interests. 

Doubtless, however, a Parliament which would take this 
view of the matter would be a Parliament returned by the 
working men themselves, and the working men, if they 
take the power into their own hands, will not use it for 
such a wholesome purpose as emigration. The working 
men have set far different ends before them. They see 



The Colonies once more. 309 

their masters growing in splendor and luxury. They see 
their own condition unimproved, and under the existing 
system unimprovable. They see the soil of England be- 
coming the demesne of an ever-diminishing number of 
fortune's favorites, and their cherished idea, it is well 
known, is a redivision of the land, and their own restora- 
tion to a share in the general inheritance. They know 
that the land laws of England are different from the land 
laws of any other country in the world. They do not ask 
how far the monopoly which they dejjrecate may be due to 
causes which legislation did not produce and cannot 
remedy. They do not inquire what the effect would be of 
a violent disturbance of landed tenures, or how far they 
would obtain from a division of the soil the happiness they 
anticipate. They insist that the land is national property, 
and they demand that they shall be no longer excluded 
from their natural inheritance. 

Men possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with. 
Divide England, Scotland, and Ireland as they will, two 
thirds of our thirty millions could not live on the produce 
of the land, and an interference with the rights of property 
would paralyze manufactures and destroy the means of 
support for the rest. As little can the trades-unions do for 
the distribution of the profits of labor with their arbitrary 
restrictions upon work and their wild notions of a dead 
level of reward, where the idle and incapable shall share 
alike with the skillful and industrious. The problem as 
they approach it is insoluble. They are like children 
grasping at the moon. 

Nevertheless, it is in these directions that their thoughts 
are running, and sooner or later the organization of the 
unions will be turned upon politics, and upon securing a 
majority in the House of Commons to carry out these no- 
tions. The gin and beer are doubtless elements of conser- 
vatism. The satisfaction of the vulgar politician at the 
increased consumption of such things is not without reason. 



310 The Colonies once more. 

The thriftless vagabond who carries his week's wages on 
Saturday afternoon to the pothouse, and emerges out of his 
bestiality on Tuesday morning to earn the materials for a 
fresh debauch — this delightful being has nothing politically 
dangerous about him. He will sell his vote to the highest 
bidder, and look no farther than his quart of half-and-half. 
The working men, however, as a body, are alive to the dis- 
grace of their order. Some day or other they may check 
for themselves what they have vainly petitioned the legis- 
lature to assist them in restraining ; and whether or no, the 
present elements of confusion in English society are suffi- 
ciently threatening. If we allow our industrial system to 
extend in the same manner and at the same rate of increase 
as hitherto, every feature most fraught with danger must 
increase along with it. The boundary line between rich 
and poor will be more and more sharply defined. The 
number of those who can afford to hold land must diminish 
as by a law of nature. The wealthy will become more 
wealthy, the luxurious more luxurious, while there will be 
an ever enlarging multitude deeply tinctured with mere 
heathenism, left to shift for themselves, and resentful of the 
neglect, with the cost of living keeping pace with the ad- 
vance of wages, and therefore in the presence of an enor- 
mous accumulation of capital, condemned, apparently for- 
ever, to the same hopeless condition, and yet with political 
power in their hands if they care to use it. 

No one who is not willfully blind can suppose that such 
a state of things can continue. Human society is made pos- 
sible only by the observance of certain moral conditions ; 
and tendencies which, if not positively immoral, are yet not 
positively moral, but material and mechanical, must and 
will issue at last in a convulsive effort to restore the social 
equilibrium. 

England, itself, is committed for good or evil to be a 
great manufacturing country. Let her manufactures cease, 
and her political greatness is at an end. It is not equally 



The Colonies once more. 311 

necessary that they should be extended beyond their pres- 
ent limit. It is not equally necessary that the stability of 
the empire should exclusively depend on them. Providence 
or our father's energy has brought splendid territories under 
the British flag, where fresh communities of us may spring 
up dependent on less precarious terms. The millions to be 
hereafter added to our numbers may be occupied in the cul- 
tivation of land, whilst our efforts at home may be turned, 
for the future, rather to improving the quality of what we 
produce than multiplying the quantity of it, and to bringing 
under control the dirt, and ignorance, and disease, and crime 
which are making our great towns into nurseries of barba- 
rism. The employers might allay their alarms. The initial 
loss, if loss there was, would compensate itself in the good 
will of the employed, and in the improved work in which 
that good-will would show itself. The surest road to devel- 
opment of trade, it has been proved to demonstration, lies 
in the development of the colonies. 

Little sanguine as we are, therefore, we conclude, as they 
say in the House of Commons, with a motion : We invite 
the Ministry no longer to indulge in indolent satisfaction 
with the revival of trade, but to look upon it merely as a 
reprieve, as a breathing time in which they may take pre- 
cautions against the return of evil days. We invite them to 
reconsider the political effects of the exodus of the Irish, and 
to regard it not as an example but as a warning. We in- 
vite them to reflect that, although our colonies might be 
considered an embarrassment to us if they were imbedded 
in continents and accessible only through the territories of 
other nations, yet that with a water highway to their doors 
they are so disposed as to contribute to a mercantile State 
such as ours not weakness but enormous strength ; that the 
ten millions by whom those colonies are now occupied 
might become fifty millions, yet the addition be felt only in 
providing openings for yet vaster numbers ; that the 
sovereign of this country would be possessed of so many 



312 The Colonies once more. 

more devoted and prosperous subjects ; and that by provid- 
ing this outlet, the only sure measures would have been 
taken for the improvement of our people at home. 

The terms on which the colonies are to remain attached 
to us may be left to settle themselves. There is no occa- 
sion for present change, if it be understood that we have no 
desire to part with them, and if colonists are admitted freely 
to such honors and privileges as the State confers on dis- 
tinguished subjects. Healthy confederations must grow, and 
cannot be made. The only stable bond of union is mutual 
good-will. 



EDUCATION : 

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE STUDENTS AT 
ST. ANDREW'S, 

March 19, 1869. 



My first duty, in the observations which I am about to 
address to you, is to make my personal acknowledgments 
on the occasion which has brought me to this place. When 
we begin our work in this world, we value most the appro- 
bation of those older than ourselves. To be regarded favor- 
ably by those who have obtained distmction bids us hope 
that we too, by and by, may come to be distinguished in 
turn. As we advance in life, we learn the limits of our 
abilities. Our expectations for the future shrink to modest 
dimensions. The question with us is no longer what we shall 
do, but what we have done. We call ourselves to account for 
the time and talents which we have used or misused, and 
then it is that the good opinion of those who are coming 
after us becomes so peculiarly agreeable. If we have been 
roughly handled by our contemporaries, it flatters our self- 
conceit to have interested another generation. If we feel 
that we have before long to pass away, we can dream of a 
second future for ourselves in the thoughts of those who are 
about to take their turn upon the stage. 

Therefore it is that no recognition of efforts of mine 
which I have ever received has given me so much pleasure 
as my election by you as your Rector ; an honor as spon- 
taneously and generously bestowed by you as it was un- 
locked for, I may say undreamt of, by me. 



314 Education: Inaugural Address at 

Many years ago, when 1 was first studying the history of 
the Reformation in Scotland, I read a story of a slave in "a 
French galley who was one morning bending wearily over 
his oar. The day was breaking, and, rising out of the gray 
waters, a line of cliffs was visible, and the white houses of 
a town and a church tower. The rower was a man unused 
to such service, worn with toil and watching, and likely, it 
was thought, to die. A companion touched him, pointed to 
the shore, and asked him if he knew it. 

" Yes," he answered, " I know it well. I see the steeple 
of that place where God opened my mouth in public to his 
glory ; and I know, how weak soever I now appear, I shall 
not depart out of this life till my tongue glorify his name 
in the same place." 

Gentlemen, that town was St. Andrew's, that galley slave 
was John Knox ; and we know that he came back and did 
" glorify God " in this place and others to some purpose. 

Well, if anybody had told me, v/hen I was reading about 
this, that I also should one day come to St. Andrew's and 
be called on to address the University, I should have lis- 
tened with more absolute incredulity than Knox's comrade 
listened to that prophecy. 

Yet, inconceivable as it would then have seemed, the un- 
likely has become fact. I am addressing the successors of 
that remote generation of students whom Knox, at the end 
of his life, " called round him," in the yard of this very Col- 
lege, " and exhorted them," as James Melville tells us, "'to 
know God and stand by the good cause, and use their time 
well." It will be happy for me if I, too, can read a few 
words to you out of the same lesson-book ; for to make us 
know our duty and do it, to make us upright in act and true 
in thought and word, is the aim of all instruction which de- 
serves the name, the epitome of all purposes for which edu- 
cation exists. Duty changes, truth expands, one age can- 
not teach another either the details of its obligations or the 
matter of its knowledge, but the principle of obligation is 



the University of St. Andrew's. 315 

everlasting. The consciousness of duty, whatever its origin, 
is to the moral nature of man what life is in the seed-cells 
of all organized creatures : the condition of its coherence, 
the elementary force in virtue of which it grows. 

Every one admits this in words. Rather, it has become a 
cant nowadays to make a parade of noble intentions. But 
when we pass beyond the verbal proposition our guides fail 
us, and we are left in practice to grope our way or guess it 
as we can. So far as our special occupations go, there is no 
uncertainty. Are we traders, mechanics, lawyers, doctors ? 

— we know our work. Our duty is to do it as honestly 
and as well as we can. When we pass to our larger inter- 
ests, to those which concern us as men — to what Knox 
meant " by knowing God and standing by the good cause " 

— I suppose there has been rarely a time in the history of 
the world when intelligent people have held more opposite 
opinions. The Scots to whom Knox was speaking knew well 
enough. They had their Bibles as the rule of their lives. 
They had broken down the tyranny of a contemptible super- 
stition. They were growing up into yeomen, farmers, arti- 
sans, traders, scholars, or ministers, each with the business 
of his life clearly marked out before him. Their duty was to 
walk uprightly by the light of the Ten Commandments, and 
to fight with soul and body against the high-born scoundrel- 
dom and spiritual sorcery which were combining to make 
them again into slaves. 

I will read you a description of the leaders of the great 
party in Scotland against whom the Protestants and Knox 
were contending. I am not going to quote any fierce old 
Calvinist who will be set down as a bigot and a liar. My 
witness is M. Fontenay, brother of the secretary of Mary 
Stuart, who was residing here on Mary Stuart's business. 
The persons of whom he was speaking were the so-called 
Catholic Lords ; and the occasion was in a letter to her- 
self:— 

" The sirens," wrote this M. Fontenay, " which bewitch 



316 Education: Inaugural Address at 

the lords of this country are money and power. If I preach 
to them of their duty to their sovereign — ■ if I talk to them 
of honor, of justice, of virtue, of the illustrious actions of 
their forefathers, and of the example which they should 
themselves bequeath to their posterity — they think me a 
fool. They can talk of these things themselves — talk as 
well as the best philosophers in Europe. But, when it 
comes to action, they are like the Athenians, who knew 
what was good, but would not do it. The misfortune of 
Scotland is that the noble lords will not look beyond the 
points of their shoes. They care nothing for the future, 
and less for the past." 

To free Scotland from the control of an unworthy aris- 
tocracy, to bid the dead virtues live again, and plant the 
eternal rules in the consciences of the people — this, as I 
understand it, was what Knox was working at, and it was 
comparatively a simple thing. It was simple, because the 
difficulty was not to know what to do, but how to do it. 
It required no special discernment to see into the fitness for 
government of lords like those described by Fontenay ; or 
to see the difference as a rule of life between the New Tes- 
tament and a creed that issued in Jesuitism and the mas- 
sacre of St. Bartholomew. The truth was plain as the sun. 
The thing then wanted was courage ; courage in common 
men to risk their persons, to venture the high probability 
that before the work was done they might have their 
throats cut, or see their houses burnt over their heads. 

Times are changed ; we are still surrounded by tempta- 
tions, but they no longer appear in the shape of stake and 
gallows. They come rather as intellectual perplexities, on 
the largest and gravest questions which concern us as 
human creatures; perplexities with regard to which self- 
interest is perpetually tempting us to be false to our real 
convictions. The best that we can do for one another is 
to exchange our thoughts freely ; and that, after all, is but 
little. Experience is no more transferable in morals than 



the University of St. Andrew's. 317 

in art. The drawing-master can direct his pupil generally 
in the principles of art. He can teach him here and there 
to avoid familiar stumbling-blocks. But the pupil must 
himself realize every rule which the master gives him. 
He must spoil a hundred coj^y-books before the lesson will 
yield its meaning to him. Action is the real teacher. In- 
struction does not prevent waste of time or mistakes ; and 
mistakes themselves are often the best teachers of all. In 
every accomplislmient, every mastery of truth, moral, 
spiritual, or mechanical, — 

Necesse est 
Multa diu concreta modis iiiolescere miris: 

our acquirements must grow into us in marvelous ways — 
marvelous — as anything connected with man has been, is, 
and will be. 

I have but the doubtful advantage, in sjoeaking to you, 
of a few more years of life ; and even whether years bring 
wisdom or do not bring it is far from certain. The fact of 
growing older teaches many of us to respect notions which 
we once believed to be antiquated. Our intellectual joints 
stiffen, and our fathers' crutches have attractions for us. 
You must therefore take the remarks that I am going 
to make at what appears to you their intrinsic value. 
Stranger as I am to all of you, and in a relation with you 
which is only transient, I can but offer you some few gen- 
eral conclusions which have forced themselves on me during 
my own experience, in the hope that you may find them 
not wholly useless. And as it is desirable to give form to 
remarks which might otherwise be desultory, I will follow 
the train of thought suggested by our presence at this 
place and the purpose which brings you here. You stand 
on the margin of the great world, into which you are about 
to be plunged, to sink or swim. We will consider the 
stock in trade, the moral and mental furniture, with which 
you will start upon your journey. 

In the first place you are Scots ; you come of a fine 



818 Education : Inaugural Address at 

stock, and much will be expected of you. If we except 
the Athenians and Jews, no people so few in number have 
scored so deep a mark in the world's history as you have 
done. No people have a juster right to be proud of their 
blood. I suppose, if any one of you were asked whether 
he would prefer to be the son of a Scotch peasant or to 
be the heir of an Indian rajah with twenty lacs of rupees, 
he would not hesitate about his answer : we should none 
of us object to the rupees, but I doubt if the Scot ever 
breathed who would have sold his birthright for them. 
Well, then, Noblesse oblige ; all blood is noble here, and a 
noble life should go along with it.- It is not for nothing 
that you here and we in England come, both of us, of our 
respective races ; we inherit honorable traditions and mem- 
ories ; we inherit qualities inherent in our bone and blood, 
which have been earned for us, no thanks to ourselves, by 
twenty generations of ancestors ; our fortunes are now 
linked together for good and evil, never more to be divided ; 
but when we examine our several contributions to the com- 
mon stock, the account is more in your favor than ours. 

More than once you saved English Protestantism ; you 
may have to save it again, for all that I know, at the rate 
at which our English parsons are now running. You gave 
us the Stuarts, but you helped us to get rid of them. 
Even now you are teaching us what, unless we saw it 
before our eyes, no Englishman would believe to be pos- 
sible, that a member of Parliament can be elected without 
bribery. For shrewdness of head, thoroughgoing com- 
pleteness, contempt of compromise, and moral backbone, 
no set of people were ever started into life more generously 
provided. You did not make these things ; it takes many 
generations to breed high qualities either of mind or body ; 
but you have them, they are a fine capital to commence 
business with, and, as I said. Noblesse oblige. 

So much for what you bring with you into the world. 
And the other part of your equipment is only second in 



the University of St. Andrew's, 319 

importance to it: I mean your education. There is no 
occasion to tell a Scotchman to value education. On this, 
too, you have set us an example which we are beginning to 
imitate : I only wish our prejudices and jealousies would 
allow us to imitate it thoroughly. In the form of your 
education, whether in the parish school or here at the 
university, there is little to be desired. It is fair all round 
to poor and rich alike. You have broken down, or you 
never permitted to rise, the enormous barrier of expense 
which makes the highest education in England a privilege 
of the wealthy. The subject-matter is another thing. 
Whether the subjects to which, either with you or with us, 
the precious years of boyhood and youth continue to be 
given, are the best in themselves, whether they should be 
altered or added to, and if so, in what direction and to 
what extent, are questions which all the world is busy 
with. Education is on everybody's lips. Our own great 
schools and colleges are in the middle of a revolution, 
which, like most revolutions, means discontent with what 
we have, and no clear idea of what we would have. You 
yourselves cannot here have wholly escaped the infection, 
or if you have, you will not escape it long. The causes 
are not far to seek. On the one hand there is the immense 
multiplication of the subjects of knowledge, through the 
progress of science, and the investigation on all sides into 
the present and past condition of this planet and its inhab- 
itants ; on the other, the equally increased range of occupa- 
tions, among which the working part of mankind are now 
distributed, and for one or other of which our education is 
intended to qualify us. It is admitted by every one that we 
cannot any longer confine ourselves to the learned lan- 
guages, to the grammar and logic and philosophy which 
satisfied the seventeenth century. Yet, if we try to pile on 
the top of these the histories and literatures of our own and 
other nations, with modern languages and sciences, we 
accumulate a load of matter which the most ardent and 
industrious student cannot be expected to cope witli. 



320 Education: Inaugural Address at 

It may seem j)resumptuous in a person like myself, un- 
connected as I have been for many years with any educa- 
tional body, to obtrude my opinion on these things. Yet 
outsiders, it is said, sometimes see deeper into a game than 
those who are engaged in playing it. 

In everything that we do or mean to do, the first condi- 
tion of success is that we understand clearly the result 
which we desire to produce. The house-builder does not 
gather together a mass of bricks and timber and mortar, and 
trust that somehow a house will shape itself out of its mate- 
rials. Wheels, springs, screws, and dial-plate will not con- 
stitute a watch, unless they are shaped and fitted with the 
pro23er relations to one another. I have long thought that, 
to educate successfully, you should first ascertain clearly, 
with sharp and distinct outline, what you mean by an edu- 
cated man. 

Now our ancestors, whatever their other shortcomings, 
understood what they meant perfectly well. In their pri- 
mary education and in their higher education they knew 
what they wanted to produce, and they suited their means 
to their ends. They set out with the principle that every 
child born in the world should be taught his duty to God 
and man. The majority of people had to live, as they 
always must, by bodily labor ; therefore every boy was as 
early as was convenient set to labor. He was not permit- 
ted to idle about the streets or lanes. He was apprenticed 
to some honest industry. Either he was sent to a farm, or, 
if his wits were sharper, he was allotted to the village car- 
penter, bricklayer, tailor, shoemaker, or whatever it might 
be. He was instructed in some positive calling by which 
he could earn his bread and become a profitable member of 
the commonwealth. Besides this, but not, you will observe, 
independent of it, you had in Scotland, established by Knox, 
your parish schools where he was taught to read, and, if he 
showed special talent that way, he was made a scholar of 
and trained for the ministry. But neither Knox nor any 



tJie University of St. Andreiv^s. 321 

one in those days thought of what we call enlarging the 
mind. A boy was taught reading that he might read his 
Bible and learn to fear God, and be ashamed and afraid to 
do wrong. 

An eminent American was once talking to me of the 
school system in the United States. The boast and glory 
of it, in his mind, was that every citizen born had a fair and 
Cfjuul start in life. Every one of them knew that he had 
a chance of becoming President of the Re])ublic, and was 
spurred to energy by the hope. Here, too, you see, is a 
distinct object. Young Americans are all educated alike. 
The aim put before them is to get on. They are like run- 
ners in a race, set to push and shoulder for the best places ; 
never to rest contented, but to struggle forward in never 
ending competition. It has answered its purpose in a new 
and unsettled country, where the centre of gravity has not 
yet determined into its place ; but I cannot think that such a 
system as this can be permanent, or that human society, con- 
stituted on such a principle, will ultimately be found tolera- 
ble. For one thing, the prizes of life so looked at are at best 
but few and the competitors many. " For myself," said the 
great Spinoza, " I am certain that the good of human life 
cannot lie in the possession of things which, for one man to 
possess, is for the rest to lose, but rather in things which all 
can possess alike, and where one man's wealth promotes his 
neighbor's." At any rate, , it was not any such notion as 
this which Knox had before him when he instituted your 
parish schools. We had no jDarish schools in England for 
centuries after he was gone, but the object was answered 
by the Church catechizing and the Sunday-school. Our 
boys, like yours, were made to understand that they would 
have to answer for the use that they made of their lives. 
And, in both countries, they were put in the way of leading 
useful lives if they would be honest, by industrial training. 
The essential thing was that every one that was willing to 
21 



322 Education : Inaugural Address at 

work should be enabled to maintain himself and his family 
in honor and independence. 

Pass to the education of a scholar, and you find the same 
principle otherwise applied. There are two ways of being 
independent. If you require much, you must j)roduce much. 
If you produce little, you must require little. Those whose 
studies added nothing to the material wealth of the world 
were taught to be content to be poor. They were a burden 
on others, and the burden was made as light as jjossible. 
The thirty thousand students who gathered out of Europe 
to Paris to listen to Abelard did not travel in carriages, and 
they brought no portmanteaus with them. They carried 
their wardrobes on their backs. They walked from Paris 
to Padua, from Padua to Salamanca, and they begged their 
way along the roads. The laws against mendicancy in all 
countries were suspended in favor of scholars wandering in 
pursuit of knowledge, and formal licenses were issued to 
them to ask alms. At home, at his college, the scholar's 
fare was the hardest, his lodging was the barest. If rich in 
mind, he was expected to be poor in body ; and so deeply 
was this theory grafted into English feeling that earls and 
dukes, when they began to frequent universities, shared the 
common simplicity. The furniture of a noble earl's room 
at an English university at present may cost, including the 
pictures of opera-dancers and race-horses and such like, per- 
haps five hundred pounds. When the magnificent Earl of 
Essex was sent to Cambridge, in Elizabeth's time, his guard- 
ians provided him with a deal table covered with green 
baize, a truckle bed, half-a-dozen chairs, and a washhand 
basin. The cost of all, I think, was five pounds. 

You see what was meant. The scholar was held in high 
honor; but his contributions to the commonwealth were 
not appreciable in money, and were not rewarded with 
money. He went without what he could not jjroduce, that 
he might keep his independence and his self-respect un- 
harmed. Neither scholarship nor science starved under thi? 



the University of St. Andrew's. 323 

treatment ; more noble souls have been smothered in lux- 
ury, than were ever killed by hunger. Your Knox was 
brought up in this way, Buchanan was brought up in this 
way, Luther was brought up in this way, and Tyndal who 
translated the Bible, and Milton and Kepler and Spinoza, 
and your Robert Burns. Compare Burns, bred behind the 
plough, and our English Byron ! 

Tliis was the old education, which formed the character 
of the English and Scotch nations. It is dying away at 
both extremities, as no longer suited to what is called mod- 
ern civilization. The apprenticeship as a system of instruc- 
tion is gone. The discipline of poverty — not here as yet, 
I am happy to think, but in England — is gone also ; and 
we have got instead what are called enlarged minds. 

I ask a modern march-of-intellect man what education is 
for ; and he tells me it is to make educated men. I ask 
what an educated man is : he tells me it is a man whose in- 
telligence has been cultivated, who knows something of the 
world he lives in — the different races of men, their lan- 
guages, their histories, and the books that they have writ- 
ten ; and again, modern science, astronomy, geology, physi- 
ology, political economy, mathematics, mechanics — every- 
thing in fact which an educated man ought to know. 

Education, according to this, means instruction in ever}^- 
thing which human beings have done, thought, or discov- 
ered ; all history, all languages, all sciences. 

The demands which intelligent people imagine that they 
can make on the minds of students in this way are some- 
thing amazing. I will give you a curious illustration of it. 
When the competitive examination system was first set on 
foot, a board of examiners met to draw up their papers of 
questions. The scale of requirement had first to be settled. 
Among them a highly distinguished man, who was to ex- 
amine in English history, announced that, for himself, he 
meant to set a paper for which Macaulay might possibly get 
full marks ; and he wished the rest of the examiners to imi- 



324 JEducation: Inaugural Address at 

tate him in the other subjects. I saw the paper which he 
set. I could myself have answered two questions out of a 
dozen. And it was gravely expected that ordinary young 
men of twenty-one, who were to be examined also in Greek 
and Latin, in moral philosophy, in ancient history, in math- 
ematics, and in two modern languages, were to show a pro- 
ficiency in each and all of these subjects, which a man of 
mature age and extraordinary talents, like Macaulay, who 
had devoted his whole time to that special study, had at- 
tained only in one of them. 

Under this system teaching becomes cramming ; an enor- 
mous accumulation of proj^ositions of all sorts and kinds is 
thrust down the students' throats, to be poured out again, I 
might say vomited out, into examiners' laps ; and this when 
it is notorious that the sole condition of making progress in 
any branch of art or knowledge is to leave on one side every- 
thing irrelevant to it, and to throw your undivided energy 
on the special thing you have in hand. 

Our old universities are struggling against these absurdi- 
ties. Yet, when we look at the work which they on their 
side are doing, it is scarcely more satisfactory. A young 
man going to Oxford learns the same things which were 
taught there two centuries ago ; but, unlike the old scholars, 
he learns no lessons of poverty along with it. In his three 
years' course he will have tasted luxuries unknown to him 
at home, and contracted habits of self-indulgence which make 
subsequent hardships unbearable : while his antiquated 
knowledge, such as it is, has fallen out of the market ; there 
is no demand for him ; he is not sustained by the respect of 
the world, which finds him ignorant of everything in which 
it is interested. He is called educated; yet, if circum- 
stances throw him on his own resources, he cannot earn a 
sixpence for himself. An Oxford education fits a man ex- 
tremely well for the trade of gentleman. I do not know 
for what other trade it does fit him as at present constituted. 
More than one man who has taken high honors there, who 



the University of St. Andrew's. 825 

has learnt faithfully all that the university undertakes to 
teach him, has been seen in these late years breaking stones 
upon a road in Australia. That was all which he was 
found to be fit for when brought in contact with the primary 
realities of things. 

It has become necessary to alter all this ; but how, and in 
what direction ? If I go into modern model schools, I find 
first of all the three R's, about which we are all agreed ; I 
find next the old Latin and Greek, which the schools must 
keep to while the universities confine their honors to these ; 
and then, by way of keeping up with the times, "■ abridg- 
ments," " text-books," " elements," or whatever they are 
called, of a mixed multitude of matters, history, natural his- 
tory, physiology, chronology, geology, political economy, 
and I know not what besides ; general knowledge which, in 
my experience, means knowledge of nothing : stuflf arranged 
admirably for one purpose, and one purpose only — to 
make a show in examinations. To cram a lad's mind with 
infinite names of things which he never handled, jjlaces he 
never saw or will see, statements of facts which he cannot 
possibly understand, and must remain merely words to him, 
— this, in my opinion, is like loading his stomach with mar- 
bles. It is wonderful what a quantity of things of this kind 
a quick boy will commit to memory, how smartly he will 
answer questions, how he will show off in school inspections, 
and delight the heart of his master. But what has been 
gained for the boy himself, let him carry this kind of thing 
as far as he will, if, when he leaves school, he has to make 
his own living ? Lord Brougham once said he hoped a time 
would come when every man in England would read Bacon. 
William Cobbett, that you may have heard of, said he 
would be contented if a time came when every man in 
England would eat bacon. People talk about enlarging the 
mind. Some years ago I attended a lecture on education 
in the Free Trade Hall at Manchester. Seven or eight 
thousand people were present, and among the speakers was 



326 Education : Inaugural Address at 

one of the most popular orators of the day. He talked in 
the usual way of the neglect of past generations, the be- 
nighted peasant, in whose besotted brain even thought was 
extinct, and whose sole spiritual instruction was the dull and 
dubious parson's sermon. Then came the contrasted pic- 
ture : the broad river of modern discovery flowing through 
town and hamlet, science shining as an intellectual sun, and 
knowledge and justice, as her handmaids, redressing the 
wrongs and healing the miseries of mankind. Then, wrapt 
with inspired frenzy, the musical voice, thrilling with tran- 
scendent emotion, — "I seem," the orator said, " I seem to 
hear again the echo of that voice which rolled over the 
primeval chaos, saying, ' Let there be light.' " 

As you may see a breeze of wind pass over standing corn 
and every stalk bends and a long wave sweej)s across the 
field, so all that listening multitude swayed and wavered 
under the words. Yet, in plain prose, what did this gentle- 
man definitely mean ? First and foremost, a man has to 
earn his living, and all the 'ologies will not of themselves 
enable him to earn it. Light ! yes, we want light, but it 
must be light which will help us to work, and find food and 
clothes and lodging for ourselves. A modern school will 
undoubtedly sharpen the wits of a clever boy. He will go 
out into the world with the knowledge that there are a 
great many good things in it which it will be highly pleas- 
ant to get hold of; able as yet to do no one thing for which 
anybody will pay him, yet bent on pushing himself forward 
into the pleasant places somehow. Some intelligent people 
think that this is a promising state of mind, that an ardent 
desire to better our position is the most powerful incentive 
that we can feel to energy and industry. A great political 
economist has defended the existence of a luxuriously-living 
idle class as supplying a motive for exertion to those who 
are less higlily favored. They are like Olympian gods, con- 
descending to show themselves in their Empyrean, and say- 
ing to their worshippers, " Make money, money enough, and 



the University of St. Andreiv^s. 327 

you and your descendants shall become as we are, and slioot 
grouse and drink champagne all the days of your lives." 

No doubt this would be a highly influential incitement to 
activity of a sort ; only it must be remembered that there 
are many sorts of activity, and short, smooth cuts to wealth 
as well as long hilly roads. In civilized and artificial com- 
munities there are many ways, where fools have money and 
rogues want it, of effecting a change of possession. The 
process is at once an intellectual pleasure, extremely rapid, 
and every way more agreeable than dull, mechanical labor. 
I doubt very much indeed whether the honesty of the coun- 
try has been improved by the substitution so generally of 
mental education for industrial; and the three R's, if no 
industrial training has gone along with them, are apt, as 
Miss Nightingale observes, to produce a fourth R of rascal- 
dom. 

But it is only fair, if I quarrel alike with those who go 
forward and those who stand still, to offer an opinion of 
my own. If I call other people's systems absurd, in justice 
I must give them a system of my own to retort upon. 
Well, then, to recur once more to my question. Before 
we begin to build, let us have a jDlan of the house that we 
would construct. Before we begin to train a boy's mind, I 
will try to explain what I, for my part, would desire to see 
done with it. 

I will take the lowest scale first. 

I accept without qualification the first principle of our 
forefathers, that every boy born into the world should be 
put in the way of maintaining himself in honest indepen- 
dence. No education which does not make this its first 
aim is worth anything at all. There are but three ways 
of living, as some one has said ; by working, by begging, 
or by stealing. Those who do not work, disguise it in 
whatever pretty language we please, are doing one of the 
other two. A poor man's child is brought here with no 
will of his own. We have no right to condemn him to be 



328 Education : Inaugural Address at 

a mendicant or a rogue ; he may ftiirly demand therefore 
to be put in the way of earning his bread by hibor. The 
practical necessities must take precedence of the intellcc- 
tuaL A tree must be rooted in the soil before it can bear 
flowers and fruit. A man must learn to stand ui)right 
upon his own feet, to respect himself, to be independent 
of charity or accident. It is on this basis only that any 
superstructure of intellectual cultivation worth having can 
possibly be built. The old apprenticeship therefore was, 
in my opinion, an excellent system, as the world used to 
be. The Ten Conmiandments and a handicraft made a 
good and wholesome equipment to commence life with. 
Times are changed. The apprentice plan broke down : 
partly because it was abused for purposes of tyranny ; 
partly because employers did not care to be burdened with 
boys whose labor was unprofitable ; partly because it 
opened no road for exceptional clever lads to rise into 
higher positions ; they were started in a groove from which 
they could never afterwards escape. 

Yet the original necessities remain unchanged. Tlie 
Ten Commandments are as obligatory as ever, and prac- 
tical ability, the being able to do something and not merely 
to answer questions, must still be the backbone of the edu- 
cation of every boy who has to earn his bread by manual 
labor. 

Add knowledge afterwards as much as you will, but let 
it be knowledge which will lead to the doing better each 
particular work which a boy is practicing ; every fraction 
of it will thus be useful to him ; and if he has it in him to 
rise, there is no fear but he will find opportunity. The 
poet Coleridge once said that every man might have two 
versions of his Bible ; one the book that he read, the other 
the trade that he pursued, where he would find perpetual 
illustrations of every Bible truth in the thoughts which his 
occupation miglit open to him. 

I would say, less fancifully, that every honest occupation 



the University of St. Andrew'^ s. 329 

to which a man sets his hand would raise him into a 
philosopher if he mastered all the knowledge that belonged 
to his craft. 

Every occupation, even the meanest — I don't say the 
scavenger's or the chimney-sweep's — but every ^jroductive 
occupation which adds anything to the capital of mankind, 
if followed assiduously with a desire to miderstand every- 
thing connected with it, is an ascending stair whose summit 
is nowhere, and from the successive steps of which the 
horizon of knowledge perpetually enlarges. Take the 
lowest and most unskilled labor of all, that of the peasant 
in the field. The peasant's business is to make the eartli 
grow food ; the elementary rules of his art are the sim- 
plest, and the rude practice of it the easiest ; yet between 
the worst agriculture and the best lies agricultural chem- 
istry, the application of machinery, the laws of the econ- 
omy of force, and the most curious problems of 2)hysiology. 
Each step of knowledge gained in these things can be 
immediately applied and realized. Each point of the 
science which the laborer masters will make him not only 
a wiser man but a better workman ; and will either lift 
him, if he is ambitious, to a higher position, or make him 
more intelligent and more valuable if he remains where he 
is. If he be one of Lord Brougham's geniuses, he need 
not go to the Novum Organon ; there is no direction in 
which his own subject will not lead him, if he cares to fol- 
low it, to the furthest boundary of thought. Only I insist 
on this, that information shall go along with practice, and 
the man's work become more profitable while he himself 
becomes wiser. He may then go far, or he may stop 
short ; but whichever he do, what he has gained will be 
real gain, and become part and jjarcel of himself. 

It sounds like mockery to talk thus of the possible 
prospects of the toil-worn drudge who drags his limbs at 
the day's end to his straw pallet, sleeps heavily, and wakes 
only to renew the weary round. I am but comparing two 



330 Education: Liaugural Address at 

systems of education, from each of which the expected 
resuhs may be equally extravagant. I mean only that if 
there is to be this voice rolling over chaos again, ushering 
in a millennium, the way of it lies through industrial teach- 
ing, where the practical underlies the intellectual. The 
millions must ever be condemned to toil with their hands, 
or the race will cease to exist. The beneficent light, when 
it comes, will be a light which will make labor more pro- 
ductive by being more scientific ; which will make the 
humblest drudgery not unworthy of a human being, by 
making it at the same time an exercise to his mind. 

I spoke of the field laborer. I might have gone through 
the catalogue of manual craftsmen, blacksmiths, carpenters, 
bricklayers, tailors, cobblers, fishermen, what you will. 
The same rule applies to them all. Detached facts on 
miscellaneous subjects, as they are taught at a modern 
school, are like separate letters of endless alphabets. You 
may load the mechanical memory with them till it becomes 
a marvel of retentiveness. Your young prodigy ma}^ 
amaze examiners, and 'delight inspectors. His achieve- 
ments may be emblazoned in blue-books, and furnish 
matter for flattering reports on the excellence of our edu- 
cational system ; and all this while you have been feeding 
him with chips of granite. But arrange your letters into 
words, and each becomes a thought, a symbol waking in 
the mind an image of a real thing. Group your words 
into sentences, and thought is married to thought and pro- 
duces other thoughts, and the chips of granite become soft 
bread, wholesome, nutritious, and invigorating. Teach 
your boys subjects which they can only remember mechan- 
ically, and you teach them nothing which it is worth their 
while to know. Teach them facts and principles which 
they can apply and use in the w^ork of their lives ; and if 
the object be to give your clever working lads a chance of 
rising to become Presidents of the United States, or mil- 
lionaires with palaces and powdered footmen, the ascent 



the Universiti/ of St. Aiidreiv's. 831 

into those blessed conditions will be easier and healthier 
along the track of an instructed industry, than by the paths 
which the most keenly sharpened wits would be apt to 
choose for themselves. 

To pass to the next scale, which more properly concerns 
us here. As the world requires handicrafts, so it requires 
those whose work is with the brain, or with brain and 
hand combined — doctors, lawyers, engineers, ministers of 
religion. Bodies become deranged, affixirs become de- 
ranged, sick souls require their sores to be attended to ; 
and so arise the learned professions, to one or other of 
which I presume that most of you whom I am addressing 
intend to belong. Well, to the education for the profes- 
sions I would apply the same principle. The student 
should learn at the university what will enable him to 
earn his living as soon after he leaves it as possible. I am 
well aware that a professional education cannot be com- 
pleted at a university ; but it is true also that with every 
profession there is a theoretic or scientific groundwork 
which can be learnt nowhere so well, and, if those precious 
years are wasted on what is useless, will never be learnt 
properly at all. You are going to be a lawyer : you must 
learn Latin, for you cannot understand the laws of Scot- 
land without it ; but if you must learn another language, 
Norman French will be more useful to you than Greek, 
and the Acts of Parliament of Scotland more important 
reading than Livy or Thucydides. Are you to be a doc- 
tor ? — you must learn Latin too ; but neither Thucydides 
nor the Acts of Parliament will be of use to you — you 
must learn chemistry ; and if you intend hereafter to keep 
on a level with your science, you must learn modern French 
and German, and learn them thoroughly well, for mistakes 
in your work are dangerous. 

Are you to be an engineer? You must work now, when 
you have time, at mathematics. You will make no progress 
without it. You must work at chemistry ; it is the graiu- 



332 Educatioii : Inaugural Address at 

mar of all physical sciences, and there is hardly one of the 
physical sciences with which you may not require to be 
acquainted. The world is wide, and Great Britain is a 
small, crowded island. You may wait long for employment 
here. Your skill will be welcomed abroad : therefore now 
also, while you have time, learn French, or German, or 
Russian, or Chinese. The command of any one of these 
languages will secure to an English or Scotch engineer 
instant and unbounded occupation. 

The principle that I advocate is of earth, earthy. I am 
quite aware of it. We are ourselves made of earth ; our 
work is on the earth ; and most of us are commonplace 
people, who are obliged to make the most of our time. 
History, poetry, logic, moral philosophy, classical literature, 
are excellent as ornament. If you care for such things, 
they may be the amusement of your leisure hereafter ; but 
they will not help you 'to stand on your feet and walk 
alone ; and no one is properly a man till he can do that. 
You cannot learn everything ; the objects of knowledge 
have multiiDlied beyond the powers of the strongest mind to 
keep pace with them all. You must choose among them, 
and the only reasonable guide to choice in such matters is 
utility. The old saying, Non multa sed multum, becomes 
every day more pressingly true. If we mean to thrive, we 
must take one line and rigidly and sternly confine our 
energies to it. Am I told that it will make men into 
machines ? I answer that no men are machines who are 
doing good work conscientiously and honestly, with the 
fear of their Maker before them. And if a doctor or a 
lawyer has it in him to become a great man, he can ascend 
through liis profession to any height to which his talents 
are equal. All that is open to the handicraftsman is open 
to him, only that he starts a great many rounds higher up 
the ladder. 

What I deplore in our present higher education is the 
devotion of so much effort and so many precious years to 



the University of St. Andreivs. 333 

subjects which have no practical bearing upon life. AVe 
had a theory at Oxford that our system, however defective 
in many ways, yet developed in us some especially precious 
human qualities. Classics and philosophy are called there 
literce humaniores. They are supposed to have an effect on 
character, and to be specially adapted for creating ministers 
of religion. The training of clergymen is, if anything, the 
special object of Oxford teaching. All arrangements are 
made with a view to it. The heads of colleges, the resi- 
dent fellows, tutors, professors, are, with rare exceptions, 
ecclesiastics themselves. 

"Well, then, if they have hold of the right idea, the effect 
ought to have been considerable. We have had thirty 
years of unexampled clerical activity among us : churches 
have been doubled ; theological books, magazines, reviews, 
newspapers, have been poured out by the hundreds of 
thousands ; while by the side of it there has sprung up 
an equally astonishing development of moral dishonesty. 
From the great houses in the city of London to the village 
grocer, the commercial life of England has been saturated 
with fraud. So deep has it gone that a strictly honest 
tradesman can hardly hold his ground against competition. 
You can no longer trust that any article that you buy is 
the thing which it pretends to be. We have false weights, 
false measures, cheating and shoddy everywhere. Yet the 
clergy have seen all this grow up in absolute indifference ; 
and the great question which at this moment is agitating 
the Church of England is the color of the ecclesiastical 
petticoats. 

Many a hundred sermons have I heard in England, 
many a dissertation on the mysteries of the faith, on the 
divine mission of the clergy, on apostolic succession, on 
bishops, and justification, and the theory of good works, 
and verbal inspiration, and the efficacy of the sacraments ; 
but never, during these thirty wonderful years, never one 
that I can recollect on common honesty, or those primi- 



334 Education: Inaugural Address at 

tive commandments, Thou shalt not lie, and Thou shalt not 
steah 

The late Bishop Blomfield used to tell a story of his 
having been once late in life at the University Church at 
Cambridge, and of having seen a verger there whom he 
remembered when he was himself an undergraduate. The 
Bishop said he was glad to see him looking so well at sucli 
a great age. " O yes, my Lord," the fellow said, " I have 
much to be grateful for. I have heard every sermon which 
has been preached in this Church for fifty years, and, thank 
God, I am a Christian still." 

Classical philosophy, classical history and literature, 
taking, as they do, no hold upon the living hearts and 
imagination of men in this modern age, leave their work- 
ing intelligence a prey to wild imaginations, and make 
them incapable of really understanding the world in which 
they live. If the clergy knew as much of the history of 
England and Scotland as they know about Greece and 
Rome, if they had been ever taught to open their eyes and 
see what is actually round them instead of groping among 
books to find what men did or thought at Alexandria or 
Constantinople fifteen hundred years ago, they would 
grajjple more effectively with the moral pestilence which is 
poisoning all the air. 

But it was not of this that I came here to speak. What I 
insist upon is, generally, that in a country like ours, where 
each child that is born among us finds every acre of land 
appropriated, a universal " Not yours " set upon the rich 
things with which he is surrounded, and a government 
which, unlike those of old Greece or modern China, does 
not permit superfluous babies to be strangled — such a 
child, I say, since he is required to live, has a right to 
demand such teaching as shall enable him to live with 
honesty, and take such a place in society as belongs to the 
faculties which he has brought with him. It is a right 
which was recognized in one shape or another by our an- 



the University of St. Andreiv's. 335 

cestors. It must be recognized now and always, if we are 
not to become a mutinous rabble. And it ought to be the 
guiding principle of all education, high and low. We 
have not to look any longer to this island only. There is 
an abiding place now for Englishmen and Scots wherever 
our flag is flying. This narrow Britain, once our only 
home, has become the breeding-place and nursery of a 
race which is spreading over the world. Year after year 
we are swarming as the bees swarm ; and year after year, 
and I hope more and more, high-minded young men of all 
ranks will prefer free air and free elbow-room for mind 
and body to the stool and desk of the dingy othce, the ill- 
paid drudgery of the crowded ranks of the professions, or 
the hopeless labor of our home farmsteads and workshops. 
Education always should contemplate this larger sphere 
and cultivate the capacities which will command success 
there. Britain may have yet a future before it grander 
than its past ; instead of a country standing alone complete 
in itself, it may become the metropolis of an enormous and 
coherent empire ; but on this condition only, that her chil- 
dren, when they leave her shores, shall look back upon her, 
not — like the poor Irish when they fly to America — as a 
stepmother who gave them stones for bread, but as a mother 
to whose care and nurture they shall owe their after pros- 
perity. Whether this shall be so, Avhether England has 
reached its highest point of greatness, and will now descend 
to a second place among the nations, or whether it has yet 
before it another era of brighter glory, depends on our- 
selves, and depends more than anything on the breeding 
which we give to our children. The boy that is kindly nur- 
tur-ed, and wisely taught and assisted to make his way in 
life, does not forget his father and his mother. He is proud 
of his family, and jealous for the honor of the name that he 
bears. If the million lads that swarm in our towns and 
villages are so trained that at home or in the colonies they 
can provide for themselves, without passing first through a 



83G Education: Inaugural Address at 

painful interval of suffering, they will be loyal wherever 
they may be ; good citizens at home, and still Englishmen 
and Scots on the Canadian lakes or in New Zealand. Our 
island shores will be stretched till they cover half the globe. 
It was not so that we colonized America, and we are reap- 
ing now the reward of our carelessness. We sent America 
our convicts. We sent America our Pilgrim Fathers, fling- 
ing them out as worse than felons. We said to the Irish 
cottier, You are a burden upon the rates ; go find a home 
elsewhere. Had we offered him a home in the enormous 
territories that belong to us, we might have sent him to 
places where he would have been no burden but a blessing. 
But we bade him carelessly go where he would, and shift 
as he could for himself ; he went with a sense of burning 
wrong, and he left a festering sore behind him. Injustice 
and heedlessness have borne their proper fruits. We have 
raised up against us a mighty empire to be the rival, it may 
be the successful rival, of our power. 

Loyalty, love of kindred, love of country, we know not 
what we are doing when we trifle with feelings the most 
precious and beautiful that belong to us — most beautiful, 
most enduring, most hard to be obliterated — yet feelings 
which, when they are obliterated, cannot change to neutral- 
ity and cold friendship. Americans still, in spite of them- 
selves, speak of England as home. They tell us they must 
be our brothers or our enemies, and which of the two they 
will ultimately be is still uncertain. 

I beg your pardon for this digression ; but there are sub- 
jects on which we feel sometimes compelled to speak in sea- 
son and out of it. 

To go back. 

I shall be asked whether, after all, this earning our living, 
this getting on in the world, are not low objects for human 
beings to set before themselves. Is not spirit more than 
matter? Is there no such thing as pure intellectual cul- 
ture ? " Philosophy," says Novalis, " will bake no bread, 



the Uaiverutij of St. Andreiv's. 337 

but it gives us our souls ; it gives us heaven ; it gives us 
knowledge of those grand truths which concern us as im- 
mortal beings." Was it not said, '' Take no thought what 
ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, or wherewithal ye shall 
be clothed. Your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have 
need of these things. Behold the lilies of the field, they 
toil not, neither do they spin. Yet Solomon in all his 
glory was not arrayed like one of these." This is not en- 
tirely a dream ! But such high counsels as these are ad- 
dressed only to few ; and perhaps fewer still have heart to 
follow them. If you choose the counsels of perfection, 
count the cost, and understand what they mean. I knew a 
student once from whose tongue dropped the sublimest of 
sentiments ; who was never weary of discoursing on beauty 
and truth and lofty motives ; who seemed to be longing for 
some gulf to jump into, like the Roman Curtius — some 
" fine opening for a young man " into which to plunge and 
devote himself for the benefit of mankind. Yet he was 
running all the while into debt, squandering the money on 
idle luxuries which his father was sparing out of a narrow 
income to give him a college education ; dreaming of mar- 
tyrdom and unable to sacrifice a single pleasure ! 

The words which I quoted were not spoken to all the dis- 
ciples, but to the Apostles who were about to wander over 
the world as barefoot missionaries. 

High above all occupations which have their beginning 
and end in the seventy years of mortal life, stand undoubt- 
edly the unproductive callings which belong to spiritual cul- 
ture. Only, let not those who say we will devote ourselves 
to truth, to wisdom, to science, to art, expect to be rewarded 
with the wages of the other professions. 

University education in England was devoted to spiritual 
culture, and assumed its present character in consequence ; 
but, as I told you before, it taught originally the accompany- 
ing necessary lesson of poverty. The ancient scholar lived, 
during his course, upon alms — alms either from living pat- 
22 



338 Education: Inaugural Address at 

rons, or founders and benefactors. But the scale of his 
allowance provided for no indulgences ; either he learnt 
something besides his Latin, or he learnt to endure hard- 
ship. And if a university persists in teaching nothing but 
what it calls the Humanities, it is bound to insist also on 
rough clothing, hard beds, and common food. For myself, 
I admire that ancient rule of the Jews that every man, no 
matter of what grade or calling, shall learn some handi- 
craft ; that the man of intellect, wliile, like St. Paul, he is 
teaching the world, yet, like St. Paul, may be burdensome 
to no one. A man was not considered entitled to live if he 
could not keep himself from starving. Surely those uni- 
versity men who had taken honors, breaking stones on an 
Australian road, were sorry sjjectacles ; and still more sorry 
and disgraceful is the outcry coming by every mail from our 
colonies : " Send us no more of what you call educated 
men ; send us smiths, masons, carpenters, day laborers ; 
all of those will thrive, will earn their eight, ten, or twelve 
shillings a day ; but your educated man is a log on our 
hands ; he loafs in uselessness till his means are spent, he 
then turns billiard-marker, enlists as a soldier, or starves." 
It hurts no intellect to be able to make a boat or a house, 
or a pair of shoes or a suit of clothes, or hammer a horse- 
shoe ; and if you can do either of these, you have nothing to 
fear from fortune. " I will work with my hands, and keep 
my brain for myself," said some one proudly, when it was 
proposed to him that he should make a profession of litera- 
ture. Sjjinoza, tlie most powerful intellectual worker that 
Europe had produced during the last two centuries, waving 
aside the pensions and legacies that were thrust upon him, 
chose to maintain himself by grinding object-glasses for 
microscopes and telescopes. 

If a son of mine told me that he wished to devote him- 
self to intellectual pursuits, I would act as I should act 
if he wished to make an imprudent marriage. I would 
absolutely prohibit him for a time, till the firmness of his 



the University of St. Andrew's. 339 

purpose liad been tried. If he stood the test, and showed 
real talent, I wonld insist that he should in some way make 
himself independent of the profits of intellectual .work for 
subsistence. Scholars and philosophers were originally 
clergyman. Nowadays a great many people whose ten- 
dencies lie in the clerical direction yet for various reasons 
shrink from the obligations which the office imposes. They 
take, therefore, to literature, and attempt and expect to 
make a profession of it. 

Now, without taking a transcendental view of the matter, 
literature happens to be the only occupation in which the 
wages are not in proportion to the goodness of the work 
done. It is not that they are generally small, but the 
adjustment of them is awry. It is true that in all callings 
nothing great will be produced if the first object be what 
you can make by them. To do what you do well should 
be the first thing, the wages the second ; but except in the 
instances of which I am speaking, the rewards of a man 
are in proportion to his skill and industry. The best car- 
penter receives the highest pay. The better he works, the 
better for his prospects. The best lawyer, the best doctor, 
commands most practice and makes the largest fortune. 
But with literature, a different element is introduced into 
the problem. The present rule on which authors are paid 
is by the page and the sheet ; the more words the more 
pay. It ought to be exactly the reverse. Great poetry, 
great philosophy, great scientific discovery, every intellect- 
ual production which has genius, work, and permanence 
in it, is the fruit of long thought, and patient and painful 
elaboration. Work of this kind, done hastily, would be 
better not done at all. When completed, it will be small 
in bulk ; it will address itself for a long time to the few 
and not to the many. The reward for it will not be meas- 
urable, and not obtainable in money except after many 
generations, when the brain out of which it was spun has 
long returned to its dust. Only by accident is a work of 



340 Education : Inaugural Address at 

genius immediately popular, in the sense of being widely- 
bought. No collected edition of Shakespeare's plays was 
demanded in Shakespeare's life. Milton received five 
pounds for " Paradise Lost." The distilled essence of the 
thought of Bishop Butler, the greatest prelate that the 
English Church ever produced, fills a moderate-sized 
octavo volume ; Spinoza's works, including his surviving 
letters, fill but three ; and though they have revolutionized 
the philosophy of Europe, have no attractions for the 
multitude. A really great man has to create the taste 
with which he is to be enjoyed. There are splendid ex- 
ceptions of merit eagerly recognized and early rewarded — 
our honored English Laureate for instance, Alfred Tenny- 
son, or your own countryman Thomas Carlyle. Yet even 
Tennyson waited through ten years of depreciation before 
poems which are now on every one's lips' passed into a 
second edition. Carlyle, whose transcendent powers were 
welcomed in their infancy by Goethe, who long years ago 
was recognized by statesmen and thinkers in both hemi- 
spheres as the most remarkable of living men ; yet, if 
success be measured by what has been paid him for his 
services, stands far below your Belgravian novelist. A 
hundred years hence, perhaps, people at large will begin to 
understand how vast a man has been among them. 

If you make literature a trade to live by, you will be 
tempted always to take your talents to the most profitable 
market ; and the most profitable market will be no assur- 
ance to you that you are making a noble or even a worthy 
use of them. Better a thousand times, if your object is to 
advance your position in life, that you should choose some 
other calling of which making money is a legitimate aim, 
and where your success will vary as the goodness of your 
work ; better for yourselves, for your consciences, for your 
own souls, as we use to say, and for the world you live in. 

Therefore, I say, if any of you choose this mode of 
spending your existence, choose it deliberately, with a full 



the University of St. Andrew's. 341 

knowledge of what you are doing. Reconcile yourselves 
to the condition of the old scholars. Make up your minds 
to be poor : care only for what is true and right and good. 
On those conditions you may add something real to the 
intellectual stock of mankind, and mankind in return may 
perhaps give you bread enough to live upon, though bread 
extremely thinly spread with butter. 

I have detained you long, but I cannot close without a 
few more general words. We live in times of change — 
political change, intellectual change, change of all kinds. 
You whose minds are active, especially such of you as give 
yourselves much to speculation, will be drawn inevitably 
into profoundly interesting yet perplexing questions, of 
which our fathers and grandfathers knew nothing. Prac- 
tical men engaged in business take formulas for granted. 
They cannot be forever running to first principles. They 
hate to see established opinions disturbed. Opinions, 
however, will and must be disturbed from time to time. 
There is no help for it. The minds of ardent and clever 
students are particularly apt to move fast in these direc- 
tions ; and thus when they go out into the world, they 
find themselves exposed to one of two temptations, accord- 
ing to their temperament: either to lend themselves to 
what is popular and plausible, to conceal their real con- 
victions, to take up with what we call in England humbug, 
to humbug others, or, perhaps, to keep matters still 
smoother, to humbug themselves ; or else to quarrel vio- 
lently with things which they imagine to be passing away, 
and which they consider should be quick in doing it, as 
having no basis in truth. A young man of ability nowa- 
days is extremely likely to be tempted into one or other of 
these lines. The first is the more common on my side of 
the Tweed ; the harsher and more thoroughgoing, perhaps, 
on yours. Things are changing, and have to change, but 
they change very slowly. The established authorities are 
in possession of the field, and are natur;illy desirous to 



342 Education: Inaugural Address at 

keep it. And there is no kind of service which they more 
eagerly reward than the support of clever fellows who have 
dipped over the edge of latitudinarianism, who profess to 
have sounded the disturbing currents of the intellectual 
seas, and discovered that they are accidental or unimpor- 
tant. 

On the other hand, men who cannot away with this 
kind of thing are likely to be exasperated into unwise 
demonstrativeness, to become radicals in politics and radi- 
cals in thought. Their private disapprobation bursts into 
open enmity ; and this road too, if they continue long upon 
it, leads to no healthy conclusions. No one can thrive 
upon denials: positive truth of some kind is essential as 
food both for mind and character. Depend upon it that 
in all long-established practices or spiritual formulas there 
has been some living truth ; and if you have not discovered 
and learnt to respect it, you do not yet understand the 
questions which you are in a hurry to solve. And again, 
intellectually impatient people should remember the rules 
of social courtesy, which forbid us in private to say things, 
however true, which can give pain to others. These rules, 
if they do not absolutely forbid us to obtrude opinions 
which offend those who do not share them, yet require 
us to pause and consider. Our thoughts and our conduct 
are our own. We may say justly to any one. You shall 
not make me profess to think true what I believe to be 
false ; you shall not make me do what I do not think just : 
but there our natural liberty ends. Others have as good 
a right to their opinion as we have to ours. To any one 
who holds what are called advanced views on serious sub- 
jects, I recommend a long suffering reticence and the re- 
flection that, after all, he may possibly be wrong. Whether 
we are Radicals or Conservatives we require to be often 
reminded that truth or falsehood, justice or injustice, are no 
creatures of our own belief We cannot make true things 
false, or false things true, by choosing to think them so. 



the University of St. Andreivs. 343 

We cannot vote riolit into wronff or wron<y into rii>ht. 

O o o o 

The eternal truths and rights of things exist, fortunately, 
independent of our thoughts or wishes, fixed as mathemat- 
ics, inherent in the nature of man and the world. They 
are no more to be trifled with than gravitation. If we dis- 
cover and obey them, it is well with us ; but that is all we 
can do. You can no more make a social regulation work 
well which is not just than you can make water run up 
hill. 

I tell you therefore, who take up with plausibilities, not 
to trust your weight too far upon them, and not to condemn 
others for having misgivings which at the bottom of your 
own minds, if you look so deej), you will find that you share 
yourselves with them. You, who believe that you have 
hold of newer and wider truths, show it, as you may and 
must show it, unless you are misled by your own dreams, in 
leading wider, simpler, and nobler lives. Assert your own 
fi-eedom if you will, but assert it modestly and quietly; 
respecting others as you wish to be respected yourselves. 
Only and especially I would say this : be honest with your- 
selves, whatever the temptation ; say nothing to others that 
you do not think, and play no tricks with your own minds. 

Of all the evil spirits abroad at this hour in the world, 
insincerity is the most dangerous. 

This above all. To your own selves be true, 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
You cannot then be false to any man. 



A FOKTNIGHT IN KERRY. 



II. 

The sketch which bears the above title was published in 
" Fraser's Magazine," at the time when the Irish Land Bill 
was under discussion in the House of Commons. English 
prejudice and English ignorance were busy with the reputa- 
tion of the unfortunate country, and clamorous with desi^air 
of its amendment by that or any other measure. I thought 
that at such a period a record of my own ex23erience in Ire- 
land might contribute, infinitesimally little, towards setting 
her condition in a truer light, — towards showing how 
among the darker features there were redeeming traits of 
singular interest and attractiveness. Pleased with my own 
performance and intending to continue it, I trusted that if 
my friends in Kerry did not approve of all that I said, they 
would at least recognize my good-will. How great was my 
surprise to find that I was regarded as an intruder into busi- 
ness which was none of mine, affecting English airs of inso- 
lent superiority, and under pretense of patronage turning 
the county and its inhabitants into ridicule ! Struck by 
the absence of petty vices among the peasantry, their sim- 
plicity of habit, and the control for good which was exer- 
cised over them by the priests, I had said rashly that religion 
in Kerry appeared to me to mean the knowledge of right 
and wrong, and to mean little besides. What dark insinua- 
tions the writer never dreamt of may be discovered in an 
unguarded word ! By " little besides," I had myself intended 
to imply that no Fenian sermons were to be heard in the 



* A Fortnight in Kerry. 345 

chapels there, that no hatred was preached against Engkmd 
or EngUsh landlords there, the subjects believed on this side 
St. George's Channel to be eternally inculcated in Catholic 
pulpits. Our excellent priest at Tuosist, — I take this op- 
portunity of apologizing to him, — declared in the county 
papers that he was cut to the heart ; that he had suffered 
many wrongs in life, but never one that had afflicted him so 
deeply as the insinuation that his flock learnt nothing from 
him but the obligations of morality. He must excuse the 
English stupidity, the English preference for the practical 
results of religion, which betrayed me into forgetfulness of 
its mysteries. He must forgive me if I repeat and extend 
my offense, and insist that the influence of the Irish priest- 
hood in the restraint of what is commonly called immorality 
cannot be overestimated. In the last century Ireland was 
one of the most licentious countries in Eurojje : at present, 
in proportion to its population, it is the i:)urest in the world. 

But the reflection on the chapel teaching was the least of 
my crimes. I had stirred a hornet's nest. In describing 
the manners of a past generation I had sketched the like- 
ness of a once notorious character in the neighborhood. To 
avoid mentioning his real name I looked over a list of Irish 
chiefs three centuries old, and called him at hazard Morty 
O' Sullivan. A dozen living Morty O'Sullivans, and the 
representatives of a dozen more who were dead, clamorously 
appropriated my description, while they denounced the in- 
accuracy of its details. 

More seriously, I had used expressions about " the Liber- 
ator," for which I was called to account by a member of his 
family. " The Liberator," I conceive, made himself the 
property of the public. I do not think he was a friend to 
Ireland. If he cast out one devil in carrying Catholic 
Emancipation, he let loose seven besides, which must be 
chained again before England and Ireland can work in har- 
mony. His invectives never spared others, either alive or 
dead ; and I see no cause why I or any one may not ex- 



346 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

press our thoughts freely about him. If the anecdotes of 
his forefathLiis, which remain among the traditions of the 
coast, are untrue or exaggerated, I meant no dishonor to the 
past or 231'esent owner of Derrynane. In the days of high 
duties, English gentlemen who lived on the coast were not 
particular how they filled their wine cellars ; the restrictions 
inflicted by English selfishness on Irish trade in the last 
century erected smuggling into patriotism ; and if the 
O'Connells on the shore of the Atlantic submitted quietly to 
the despotism of the officers of the revenue, tamer blood ran 
in their veins than might have been expected from the char- 
acter of their famous representative. 

Anyhow I had given mortal offense where I had least 
thought of offending. I was an instance in my own person 
of the mistakes which Englishmen seem doomed to make 
when they meddle, however lightly, with this singular peo- 
ple. I hesitated to take another step on so dangerous a 
soil, especially as (let me drop my disguise and acknowl- 
edge myself as the tenant of the spot to which I described 
myself as a visitor) — especially as my lease was unexpired. 
I had another season before me in the scene of my delin- 
quency ; and courteous as the Irish uniformly show them- 
selves to strangers who have nothing to do with them, they 
are credited with disagreeable tendencies when they con- 
sider themselves injured. It was hinted to me that I should 
be a brave man if I again ventured into Kerry. 

The storm was renewed in America — files were for- 
warded to me of the " Irish Republic," in which I was de- 
nounced as a representative of the hereditary enemies of 
Ireland. And though I found a friend there — himself an 
exile, having loved his country not wisely, but too well, 
who could yet listen patiently to an Englishman who loved 
her too, but did not love her faults, I held it but prudence 
to suspend the prosecution of my enterprise till the summer 
should have again passed, and we birds of passage had 
mi'ii'ated to our winter homes. 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 347 

We went back to Derreen in spite of warnings, but our 
hearts beat uneasily as we approached the charmed neigh- 
borhood. At Mallow, where we changed carriages, a gi- 
gantic O'Connell was sternly pacing the platform. I felt 
relieved when he passed our luggage without glancing at 
the address. The clouds on the mountain tops seemed to 
frown ominously. The first thing that met our eyes at the 
hotel where we stopped to luncheon was a denunciatory 
paragraph in a local paper. When we arrived at our beau- 
tiful home a canard reached us that we had been censured, 
if not denounced, at a neighboring Catholic chapel. The 
children at the National School, for whom in past years we 
had provided an occasional holiday entertainment, had been 
forbidden, it was whispered, to come near us any more. 
For a few days — such was the effect of a guilty conscience 
— we imagined the people were less polite to us. The 
" Good evening kindly " of the peasant coming home from 
his work, the sure sign of genuine good will, seemed less 
frequent than silence or an inaudible mutter. Fewer old 
women than usual brought their sore legs to be mended or 
pitied, fewer family quarrels were brought to us to arbitrate, 
interminable disputes about " the grass of a cow " or the in- 
terpretation of a will where a ragged testator had be- 
queathed an interest in a farm over which he had no more 
power than over a slice of the moon. 

One day, so active is fancy in the uneasy atmosphere of 
Ireland, we conceived that we had been " visited." On a 
misty Sunday afternoon, when the servants about the place 
had gone to " the dance," and we were alone in the house 
watching the alternate play of fog and sunlight on the lake, 
there appeared round the angle of a rock on the gravel 
walk before the windows a group of strangers. Going out 
to inquire their business, I found myself in the presence of 
ten or twelve men, not one of whose faces I recognized. I 
asked what they wanted, One of them said they were look- 
ing at the place, which was obvious without their informa- 



348 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

tion. I suggested that the grounds were private — they 
should have asked leave. He replied as I thought, with an 
odd smile, that he saw no occasion for it. And when I 
insisted that there was occasion, and that if he put it in 
that way they must go away, the rest looked inquiringly at 
their leader, as if to ask whether they should make me un- 
derstand practically that I was not in England. He hesi- 
tated, and, after a pause, moved off, and his companions fol- 
lowed. I found afterwards they were boys from beyond the 
mountains, out holiday-making. They had meant to picnic 
in the woods, and looking on me as an interloper, had not 
troubled themselves to remember my existence. My alarms 
were utterly goundless ; but we had been reading " Realities 
of Irish Life," and our heads were full of chim?eras. 

Something had been amiss, but there was more smoke 
than fire. Our kind priest, when he understood at last that 
I had meant him no ill, but had rather intended to compli- 
ment him, forgave me on the score of " invincible igno- 
rance." He had vindicated himself before the diocese in the 

" Chronicle," and could now admit that I was no worse 

than a stupid John Bull. We held our feast of reconc'lia- 
tion, at which he was generously present, with the school 
children on the lawn. They leapt, raced, wrestled, jum»-yed 
in sacks, climbed greasy poles, and the rest of it — a luin- 
dred stout little fellows with as many of their sisters ; tour 
out of five of the boys to grow up, thanks to the paternal 
wisdom of our legislators, into citizens of the United Stateo ; 
the fifth to be a Fenian at home ; the girls to be mothers rf 
families on the Ohio or the Missouri, where the Irish ra,ce 
seems intended to close its eventful history and disappear in 
the American Republic. 

Quit, then, of my self-made difficulties, I might resume 
my story where I let it fall, and fill in with more discretion 
the parts of my original canvas which I left untouched. 
Longer acquaintance with the county, however, presented 
other matters to me, of fresher, perhaps more serious intt^ 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 349 

est. I prefer therefore to wander on in somewhat desultory 
fashion. 

I dropped my thread on the eve of the sportsman's festi- 
val — the day of sufficient consequence to be marked in 
almanacs — on which " grouse-shooting commences." The 
momentous event takes place in Ireland on the 20th of Au- 
gust. All things lag behind in the sister country, and even 
grouse and partridges do not attain their full size till Eng- 
land and Scotland have set the example. May Ireland in 
this department of her business lag behind forever. The 
spoilt voluptuary of the Northern moors, whose idea of 
sport is to stand behind a turf bank with a servant to load 
his guns for him, while an army of gillies drive the grouse 
in clouds over his head, will find few charms in the Kerry 
mountains. Cattle graze the lower slopes ; sheep and goats 
fatten on the soft sweet herbage of the higher ridges, which 
snow rarely covers or frost checks, and the warm winds 
from the Gulf Stream keep perennially green. Each family 
in the valley has its right of pasture on one or other of the 
ranges for its cows or its flocks, and the boys and girls that 
watch them disturb the solitudes elsewhere devoted to the 
sacred bird. Long may it remain so. Long may it be ere 
Irish landlords follow the precedents of Yorkshire or Suth- 
erlandshire, and sacrifice their human tenants to a surfeit of 
amusements. The sportsman that would fill his bag in 
Kerry must be prepared to walk his twenty miles — keep 
his head steady among the crags, where if he slip he may 
fall a thousand feet. He must miss little — kill his birds 
clean in places where he can find them ; and, let him do his 
best, if he spare the hares he will shoot no more than he 
can carry conveniently on his own shoulders for the supply 
of the larder at home. He must be content to find the best 
reward of his toil in the exquisite air, in the most elaborate 
variety of the most perfect scenery in the world — cliff, cat- 
aract, and glen — fresh water lake and inland sea — spirit- 
haunted all of them, with wild tales of Irish history — the 



350 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

mountain jewels set in the azure ring of the Atlantic, which 
circles round three sides of the horizon. 

Sporting thus, and in such scenes, may be censured by 
the moralist, but it is still exquisite fooling. I at least 
have not outgrown my taste for it. I must dare Mr. 
Freeman's ill opinion, and as the time comes round take my 
turn with the rest. 

Let us suppose, then, a morning late in August in this 
year of grace 1870. We set out on foot — myself, the 
keeper, and a second gun, a guest trained unhappily in 
more luxurious shooting grounds, who condescends for 
once to waste a day with me. Carriages, even ponies, 
cannot help us to our ground over the broken tracks we 
have to follow. It is still — so still that the cutter floats 
double at her moorings, yacht and shadow ; while here 
and there two lines of ripple, meeting at a point, show 
where a cormorant is following slowly a school of retreat- 
ing sprats, or a seal is taking his morning's airing. The 
path leads for half a mile along the shore, and then strikes 
up into the valley, which narrows as we advance. A deep 
river, fringed with marshy meadows, drags slowly down 
the middle of it to the sea. The lake out of which it runs 
two miles up is scarcely thirty feet above high-water mark. 
The ground is gradually sinking, and in a little while — 
a geologist's little while, in a few thousand years or so — 
the precipices which wall in the glens will dip their bases 
in salt water. 

The greater part of the valley on either side is raised 
above reach of floods ; and the soil from its situation 
might be very easily drained, and has been evidently in- 
habited, and even thickly inhabited, from a very early era. 
Wild as is the scene at present, we see traces as we ad- 
vance of three distinct eras of occujDation. On the hill side 
a quarter of a mile from us is a circular mound, flat at the 
top, with steep scarped grassy sides. It is a rath — one of 
many which are in the neighborhood — called a fort by 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 351 

some, but fort it could have never been — rather a human 
rabbit burrow. Beneath the surfiice, seven or eight feet 
down, and excavated where the soil is hardest, run a series 
of chambers, communicating with each other by holes 
barely large enough to allow the body to pass through, the 
arches of both hole and chamber turned so accurately that 
one would think some animal working by instinct, some 
missing link, had made them, rather than a Celt with a 
reason half grown. 

Beside the road stands a circle of gray stones nine or ten 
feet high, raised, doubtless, by the hands which burrowed 
the mounds ; perhaps the burial spot of some famous chief, 
perhaps a House of Parliament or court of law, perhaps 
a temple to which ages before the Deluge honest folks 
plodded morning and evening on Sundays. Farther on, 
and lately exposed by the abrasion of the peat which had 
covered and protected it, is a broad slab of old red sand- 
stone ground smooth by glacier action, and scored over 
with circles something like a genealogical tree. They are 
of all sizes, and disposed in all varieties of pattern. Some- 
times the rings are concentric, two or even three lying one 
within the others. Sometimes single rings, large and 
small, are clustered into groups. These, too, are a mystery. 
Was the stone the starry map of some Druid astronomer ? 
Was it a rude astrolabe — were the circles magical siffns — 
and did here stand the chair of justice of some Brehon, 
half rogue, half sage, that sat in judgment there on the 
quarrels of the glen ? Even the rashest antiquarians for- 
bear their conjectures. We know only that we are among 
the remains of a race which lies far away beyond the 
horizon of history. 

Below us, among some trees at the side of a water- 
course, are the fragments of a ruined building, more 
modern infinitely than the monuments which I have just 
described, for it is composed of bricks, genuine burnt clay, 
and mortar. Yet it is still old. It has been standinir 



352 A Fortnight i7i Kerry. 

certainly not less than two centuries. Looked at closer, 
it will ex^^lain how these valleys and mountain sides, 
clothed not so long ago, as we can see by the stumps pro- 
truding from the ground, with forests of fir, and birch, 
and yew, assumed their present asj)ect of naked desolation. 
Sloping away from the foot of the wall lies a heap of what 
looks at first like broken stone, but proves on examina- 
tion to be slag. We have before us all that is left of the" 
once famous smelting furnaces established by Sir William 
Petty. The founder of the Lansdowne family secured, in 
the scramble for Irish land, for some trifling sum, the 
lordship of this wilderness of mountains. His utilitarian 
eye discerned the wealth that lay stored in the mass of 
timber. He shi^Dped cargoes of ore from Wales and Corn- 
wall to the Kenmare River, and stripped the district bare 
— bare to the very bone of rock — to melt it into metal. 
What harm ? The woods were hiding-places for wolves 
and rapparees, or, worse than both, for Jesuits ; and the 
lovers of the picturesque had not yet come into being even 
in England. 

And there is a third record before us of an order of 
things which, though nearer to us far than the other two, 
has still vanished as they have vanished. Far ujd the 
mountain sides and on the slojDing meadows are ridges 
which mark departed cultivation, now fast relapsing into 
peat. Ditches, too, we can see, where were once deep 
and effective drains, overgrown with briar and bush, and 
choked with reeds and mud. I mentioned in my former 
paper that these districts, before the jDotato famine, were 
densely peopled. One house stands now where a quarter 
of a century ago there were four. The holdings attached 
to them are thrown together, and subdivision under any 
pretext is sternly forbidden. Should hard times come 
asain there are thus fewer inhabitants in dano;er of starva- 
tion, and those that remain are no longer utterly dependent 
upon a single root. They are so far better off than their 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 353 

fathers that they are above the reach of being overwhelmed 
by any sudden calamity like that which overtook them 
before ; but the difference is rather relative than absolute. 
Their farms are now larger than they care to cultivate, or 
could cultivate if they wished it, where only spade hus- 
bandry is possible. They till just so much soil as will 
provide their own potatoes, and keep alive their cattle 
through the winter and spring. They make money by 
their wool, and butter, and pigs ; but they keep their hold- 
ings as they keep their j^ersons, in rags. Their fences are 
always broken. Their drains are filled in. The cabins 
are still the common home of all the live stock, human and 
animal. Their habits are unchanged, and to all appearance 
unchangeable. They refuse to acquire a taste for any 
cleaner or better style of living. The turf bog provides 
them with fuel, and warmth is the only form of comfort 
which they value. Thus they have no motive for work 
when all their wants are satisfied. They tell you with a 
shrug that emigration has trebled the price of labor, and 
that they cannot afford to hire workmen. . And thus every- 
where in the south cultivation recedes with the decrease of 
population. The country, in its own language, is going 
back to bog. A stream at one place overran the road. 
In times of flood the ford was impassable ; the cause was 
simply that an old drain had been closed by neglect, and 
the water at the same time was drowning and ruining 
twenty acres of excellent meadow. The tenant of said 

meadow told me he was going to apply to Lord to 

build a bridge at the ford. The bridge would cost sixty 
pounds, while five pounds laid out in labor would dry both 
road and fields. There is your Kerry farmer ; and lease 
or no lease, Land Act or no Land Act, such he will remain 
till he is carried away from the land of his birth and re- 
leased from its enchantments. While the holdings were 
small, they had to make the most of them, or they could 
not live. But no Irish peasant will woivk harder than 

23 



354 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

necessity obliges ; and if the soil is to be again ade(j[uately 
tilled by the Celtic race, it will be by subdivision, and not 
otherwise. I can easily understand the objections of the 
landlords. The lesson of the famine is too terrible to be 
forgotten. Ireland may become more and more a cattle- 
growing country, or in time Scotch and English laborers 
may be imported, and the agricultural system be revolu- 
tionized ; but the fact remains, that the valleys in Kerry 
would su|)port, if properly tilled, at least twice their present 
population with ease. 

The grouse are waiting for us, but they must still wait : 
we have a long climb to make before we shall see them. 
Although the heather lies thickest on the lower slopes, they 
prefer the colder altitudes, and the Italian softness of the 
climate down below does not agree with them. Up, then, 
we must mount. The ranges for which we are bound are 
near two thousand feet above the sea ; and as the keeper's 
wind is better than ours, he tells us a story as we rise. The 
ascent leads first by a rocky path where the river falls be- 
side us in a series of cascades, the projecting rocks forming 
cool dripping caves where ferns of all varieties, from the tall 
Osmunda to the shy Killarney fern, which hides itself in the 
most sequestered corners, cluster in the transparent gloom. 
A few hundred feet up we emerge upon a level meadow 
half a mile wide and a mile deep, walled in by precipices, 
with a solitary farm-house at the upper end, which is throw- 
ing up its thin column of smoke against the cliff at its back. 
More desolate spot for a human habitation the eye has rarely 
rested on. In the winter months the occupants of it are cut 
off utterly from intercourse with the outer world. During 
summer the children descend to the valley school, and the 
old people to the chapel to mass. From November to 
March the rain and wind keep them prisoners. 

The river, where it leaves the plateau, leaps over a shelf 
of rock and falls thirty or forty feet into a rocky pool. It 
was here, said our guide as we passed it, that Itathleen Sul- 



A FortnigJit in Kerry, 355 

livan was murdered. The tale, when he told it, was as 
singular as it was wild. The ridge overhanging the glen 
forms the dividing line between Cork and Kerry. From 
the crest you look on one side over the Kenmare River, on 
the other upon Bantry Bay — Berehaven lies at your feet ; 
and about forty years ago, when the English fleet was an- 
chored there, a sailor who by some means had become pos- 
sessed of a bag of sovereigns, secured them in a belt round 
his waist, deserted from his ship, climbed the crags by a 
goat track where they are generally considered inaccessible, 
and descended into this valley. He intended to hide him- 
self there till the pursuit was over, and then to escape to 
America. A criminal flying from justice is a sacred per- 
son in most parts of Ireland. He made his way to the farm- 
house, where he was offered shelter for the night ; and pre- 
suming on his character, and perhaps warmed by whiskey, he 
showed his host the treasure which he had brought with 
him. The temptation was too strong to be resisted. The 
sailor fell asleep by the fire. Kathleen, a girl belonging to 
the farm, who slept in the loft above, was disturbed by a 
light which glimmered through the chinks in the floor, and 
looking down she saw her master stand over the sleeping 
sailor and kill him. The body was carried out and buried. 
The man's presence there was of course unknown, and no 
inquiry was made for him. The girl, terrified at the dread- 
ful secret of which she had become the unwilling possessor, 
did not venture to speak. At last in an evil moment for 
herself, in a quarrel with her master she let fall an incau- 
tious word, from which he gathered that she knew what he 
had done. One morning early, when she went out to milk 
the cows, he followed her to the top of the waterfall, watched 
his opportunity, and flung her over. She was killed on the 
spot. There was an inquest. She was supposed to have 
fallen accidentally, and the murderer, whom we will call 
O'Brien, was now assured of his safety. He was shrewd 
in his generation ; quietly and without ostentation he laid 



356 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

out the sailor's money. He bought cows and slieep, he 
grew rich, and all that he did jDrosj^ered with him. So 
passed seventeen years. Kathleen was forgotten. The 
lucky O'Brien was the sovereign of the glen, and the envy 
of the neighborhood, till justice awoke suddenly from its 
long sleep. 

As Kathleen had seen him kill the sailor, so there had 
been an unknown witness to the murder of Kathleen. A 
stranger had been on the mountains, himself after no good 
— shearing O'Brien's sheep to steal the wool. He had 
been on the watch lest he should be himself detected, and 
from a crag overhanging the flill he had observed all that 
took place. He, too, remained silent, from a consciousness of 
his own guilt. He went down to Berehaven, where he found 
employment as a laborer in the copper mines, and there he 
continued to work, still keeping his secret, till, having grown 
an elderly man, he one day fell down a shaft : he was badly 
hurt, and believing himself to be dying, sent for a priest, and 
in confession told him all. The priest insisted that he must 
make his declaration public. A magistrate took his deposi- 
tion upon oath, and a warrant was issued for O'Brien's arrest. 
Months elapsed before it could be executed : the murderer 
was protected by the customs which he had himself broken. 
By daylight his cabin commanded all the approaches to it ; 
no one could come within half a mile of it unseen ; the peo- 
j^le in the valley below gave him warning by signals when 
danger was near, and he escaped into a cave high up among 
the crags, where he lay concealed till the coast was clear. 
At last one stormy night, when the watchers were under 
cover, and sounds were drowned in the warring of the wind 
and the waterfalls, a party of police made their way to his 
door and caught him. He was taken to Tralee, was tried, 
found guilty, and after a full confession was hanged.^ 

1 I have altered the names. The story is otherwise true in all its parts, 
and in this summer of 1870 had a singular sequel. A man bearing marks 
of ill-usage appeared one day at a cabin near Ivenmare, and complained of 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 357 

It is faring with the grouse as with Corporal Trim's 
story of " The King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles." 
We cannot get beyond the first sentence for interruiDtions. 
No matter, we are near the ground now. While listening 
to the keeper's tale we have left the valley, and ascended 
gradually by the sheep walks. We are making for a gap 
in the ridge which is now immediately above our heads. 
The aneroid gives us 1,700 feet above the sea level. Five 
minutes' hand-and-foot climbing, up to our waists in heather, 
lands up on the top, and we fling ourselves on the grass to 
recover breath and wet our throats in an ice-cold sprino-. 
Even here there is no breeze. The sky above us is cloud- 
lessly blue ; the gorges underneath are filled with a trans- 
parent haze ; behind us is our own harbor of Kilmakilloge, 
. with the Derreen woods and birch-fringed inlets. We trace 
the course of the broad river as it sweeps away to the At- 
lantic, ScarrifF towering at its mouth, and then the Skelligs, 
and far away Mount Brandon and the Dingle range. An 
English yacht is drifting up with the tide, her sails hanging 
loose without a breath to fill them. Landwards, Carran 
Tual has a veil of mist upon it. Every other peak through- 
out the mountain panorama is clear. In front the cliffs fiill 
away to Bantry Bay, which lies stretched at our feet in sum- 
mer calm. To the left is Sugar-loaf, keeping watch over 
the fairy Glengariff. Outside it, covering Bantry itself, is 
Whiddy Island, where the French fleet came in 1797 — 
came, tempted by Irish promises, to find despair and de- 
struction. Across the bay and over the hills, and far as we 
can see, lies the blue girdle of the illimitable ocean, flecked 
with white spots of sails or crossed by lines of smoke 
where an Inman or a Cunarder is forming a floating bridge 
between the Old and the New World. 

having been badly beaten. He was the son of the Berehaven miner. He 
had been in America since the trial, and had but newly returned. O' Brien's 
son had fallen in with him, recognized him, knocked him down and kicked 
him, and had sworn that if he saw him again his life should pay for his 
father's. 



358 A Fortnight in Kerry, 

We have now no more climbing for the day ; we can 
walk along the high level till, if we please, we make the 
circuit of our bounds. At any rate, we shall pass round 
the head of the great valley, and descend ten miles distant. 
My comijanion looks ifi dismay at the wilderness of rocks, 
and exclaims that he would as soon expect to meet a tiger 
as a grouse there. He need not despair — he will meet a 
few, and that was as much as we promised him. The red 
grouse of Kerry differs in all his habits from his brothers 
in North Britain. He is larger, heavier, and stronger on 
the wing. The packs break up early ; the birds lie about 
singly, or in twos and threes, chiefly on shelves of cliflf or 
in the hollows between the high hummocks, where the 
heather is thick and the sheep least disturb them. They 
are wild ; so, though we let the dogs range, we cannot 
afford to wait for a point, and must walk well up to them. 
When the grouse rise their flight is like a blackcock's, and 
if we let them go we shall see no more of them. The 
sheep and goats have chosen the highest ridges to-day, in 
the absurd hope of finding the air cooler there. They are 
as active as deer. With a fiendish ingenuity they divine 
the way that we are going, and while they keep steadily 
a few hundred yards ahead of us, ahead of them we see a 
continual flutter of brown wings, and mountain hares 
by dozens cantering leisurely away. It can't be helped. 
Sheep are of more consequence than sportsmen's pleasure, 
and meanwhile make the best of keepers. If they prevent 
the grouse from multiplying, they insure them effectively 
against being killed down. No matter — we shall get 
what we want. We separate that we may not talk. We 
must keep our eyes peeled, as the Americans say, for we 
know not where or when a bird may rise. A right and 
left from my friend, as we part, restores his good humor. 
We press a gossoon who is sheep-watching into our service 
to carry hares, and shoot whatever we come across. Why 
tire the reader with particulars ? After three hours it is 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 369 

luncheon time. We have five brace of grouse, half a 
dozen hares, and a snipe or two ; and for Kerry we have 
done respectably. We lie down in the heather beside a 
spring which sjDOuts from a rift in the rock, cold as if it 
ran out of a glacier. Our flasks and sandwich boxes are 
emptied, the dogs lie curled at our feet, and we smoke our 
pipes in meditative inertness, gazing over the glorious 
scene. Go where you will among these hills there is 
always some fresh surprise. The abruptness with which 
the gorges fall off conceals their existence till we are close 
on them. We are sitting now on the rim of Glenarm, a 
narrow valley scarce a rifle-shot across, with a solitary 
lake at the bottom of it sixteen hundred feet down. The 
lake is a famous fishing-place, and had been the scene of 
a quarrel in the beginning of the summer, which, though 
happily it went no farther than words, is extremely charac- 
teristic of the country. It may serve to amuse us for a few 
minutes till our pipes are finished. 

I must premise that in the south of Ireland the priests 
and the fisheries go ill together. For some unknown rea- 
son the presence of a priest is supposed to bring ill-luck 
both to net and rod. 

In a village a mile below the lake is a congregation of 
Soupers — Protestant converts, so named by the Catholics 
from the means said to have been used to convince them 
of their errors. However this might be, there is now a 
church there, a school, two dozen or more useful Protest- 
ant families, and an excellent, high-spirited young clergy- 
man, Irish born and Irish tempered, and one of the most 
hard-working of men. In this wild country we depend 
sometimes for our dinners on what we can catch or shoot. 
P., so let me call the clergyman, is a fisherman after the 
Apostles' model. One day he had gone with his rod to 
the lake. His rival the priest. Father T., an athletic 
young giant well known in the neighborhood, was on 
another part of it on the same errand. Some boys who 



360 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

were fishing also passed P. and complained of bad sport ; 
and P., who lives in normal militancy with the spiritual 
opposition, observed that they could expect no better when 
there was a priest on the lake. 

The boys repeated the words to the father, who was 
seen shortly after coming up at a swinging trot. 

" What's that you said about me ? " he exclaimed when 
he reached P. P. made no answer, but fished on. " What 
did you say about me ? " reiterated the fether more fiercely. 

" I never mentioned your name," replied P., not caring 
to turn round. " You did ! " rejoined the other. " Well, 
if you wish to have it," said P., " I told them there was 
neither grace nor luck where a priest came." P.'s head 
scarcely touched T.'s shoulder. The father flourished his 
blackthorn. " It is lucky for you," he said, " that we are 
in a land where the law is over us, or I'd break your head 
across. How dare you speak like that ? " 

" The law over us ! " retorted P. ; " well, it is, and we 
must bear it. If there was no law, I was brought up 
where I learnt the use of my hands. But, if it comes to 
daring, how dared you take five shillings last winter from 
the fishermen for saying mass on their nets when they 
were after the herring, and you know as well as I that 
your mass would bring them neither bad nor good ? " 

How much farther the conversation went, I know not. 
The most curious part of the matter was to follow. So far 
it might be thought each of the parties had got as good as 
he brought, and neither had much to complain of. P., 
however, sued his antagonist at the Sessions for ex- 
citing to commit a breach of the peace. One of the mag- 
istrates, I was told, was a Catholic ; but, though they 
dismissed the case, poor Father T., notwithstanding, had to 
pay the costs of the summons. 

Protestant clergy, it seems, can still have justice in Ire- 
land, notwithstanding the disestablishment. 

W^e have loitered long enough over our luncheon, and 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 361 

we must up and away. We still keep along the high 
ground skirting the head of the valley, and firing an occa- 
sional shot. Our moderate game-bag is filled. By four 
o'clock we are on the range opposite to that on whidi we 
ascended in the morning, and, as the crow flies, we are 
not far fi'om home. The harbor is just under us, and the 
house is just visible among the woods. The sea breeze, the 
sea turn, or Satan, as the people call it, which always blows 
from the ocean on summer afternoons, has brought in the 
English schooner, which lies at anchor half a mile from the 
boat-house. Our shooting is over. The gossoon has taken 
a short cut, and gone down with the hares. The keej)er 
prepares to follow with the dogs and bag. We have our- 
selves a choice of ways — either to accompany him down 
the gently sloping shoulder of the mountain direct to Der- 
reen, or to make a round by another glen as remarkable as 
any we had seen. My companion was tired, and selected 
to go with the keeper. It still wanted three hours of sun- 
set, and I myself decided for the glen. Here, again, the 
cliffs were precipitous, falling sheer from below my feet to 
where the rocks which have been split off by wet and frost, 
lie piled in masses under the crags. There was a sort of 
chimney, however, where it was possible to descend with 
safety, and I had a special reason for my choice of way. 
All the glens are inhabited more or less. In this one there 
was a cabin, which I could see from the edge on which I 
was standing, where we had heard the day before that there 
was a woman lying dangerously ill. Her husband had 
applied to us for wine or medicine, but though there has 
been a school in the neighborhood for thirty years, where, 
besides the three R's they are taught grammar, and geog- 
raphy, and the principles of mechanics, and natural history, 
and choice specimens of English composition in prose and 
verse are learnt by rote by pupils who do not understand a 
word of them, simpler matters of more immediate conse- 
quence are forgotten. The Irish of the glens do not /et 



362 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

distinguish between a pliysic-bottle and a charm. They 
would hang castor oil about their necks, and expect as 
much result as if it was in their stomachs, and would swal- 
low a paper prescription with as much faith as the drugs 
which it indicated. They have a contempt for professional 
doctors, and unbounded belief in amateurs. We cannot 
escape our responsibilities, but we can venture on nothing 
without going in person to learn what is the matter, and 
without seeing our instructions obeyed with our own eyes. 
The cabin to which I was going was a mile distant from 
any other habitation. It stood on a green bank across a 
river, and was only accessible over stepping-stones. Not- 
withstanding the dry weather the filth was ankle-deep be- 
fore the door. The windows were blocked up with straw, 
and when I entered I could see nothing until my eyes had 
grown accustomed to the darkness. Gradually I made out 
two or three pigs, a spindle half overturned, and a plate or 
two. Human creatures there were none to be seen, old or 
young, nor sign of them. The place seemed so entirely de- 
serted that I supposed I had made a mistake. Groping 
round, however, I found the latch of a second door, and on 
lifting it found myself in a sort of outhouse more wretched 
than many an English pig-sty ; and there, on a rude shelf of 
boards, littered over with straw, lay the woman I was in 
search of She had been left perfectly alone. Her pulse 
was scarcely perceptible. She had received the last sacra- 
ments, and might have died at any moment ; yet of all her 
family (she had a husband and two grown sons, certainly, 
— whether she had daughters I do not know) there was not 
one who cared to watch by her. They were in good cir- 
cumstances ; they had cows and sheep ; they had a fair- 
sized farm, and relatives in America who had helped them 
with money to stock it. When she died she would be de- 
cently waked. The whiskey would flow freely ; the keen 
would ring along the valley as if a thousand hearts were 
breaking. Yet the poor soul could be left to start upon its 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 363 

last journey with no friendly hand to soothe the parting 
pain, or loving voice to whisper hope and comfort. I could 
but feel that the words of Swift, written a century and a 
half ago of Ireland, were still as applicable as ever : " Who- 
ever travels in this country, and observes the faces, habits, 
and dwellings of the natives, will hardly think himself in a 
land where law, religion, or common humanity is pro- 
fessed." 

The coming in of a yacht is always an event with us. It 
rarely happens but there is some one on board that we know 
or know about. At least they will have heard of Derreen, 
and will wish to see it ; and living as we do at the end of 
all things, the sight of fresh faces is specially welcome. On 
the present occasion we were more than usually fortunate. 

The owner, Mr. , was a distant acquaintance. He had 

an American gentleman on board who was fresh from Grave- 
lotte, who had stood on that bloody field beside the King of 
Prussia, and had been obliged, in leaving it, to pick his way 
for half a mile as he walked, lest he should tread upon the 
mangled bodies of men. We have supped full of horrors 
since that day. Death and destruction have become our 
common food. They have lost the dreadful charm of nov- 
elty, and we turn sick and weary from the monotonous tale. 
Here, at least, we need have no more of it. There was, be- 
sides, a person whose name I had often heard, — Mr. C. 

F , an Irish landlord, whose stern rule had made him 

notorious for the crimes which he had provoked, who him- 
self had borne a charmed life, so many a ball had whistled 
past him harmlessly. 

We had a visitor, too, of our own, the Dean of , the 

most accomplished of Irish antiquaries, long second only to 
Petrie, and by Petrie's death succeeding to his vacant chair. 
Taking advantage of our company we determined the next 
day to open one of the large raths which I mentioned above, 
that we might see if it contained any curiosities. Guarded 
by superstition, and believed to be inhabited by the good 



364 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

people, it had been left untouched till thirty years ago, when 
an adventurous treasure-seeker was reported to have at- 
tempted an entrance. Attempted, not succeeded. An old 
man in the neighborhood told us, that being then a rash 
youth he had himself taken part in the adventure. They 
had penetrated into the first chamber, where they had found 
a broken quern ; their way had then been stopped by an 
iron door, and while struggling to force it they had been 
encountered by a black apparition resembling a man ; they 
had fled for their lives : one of them (there were three) had 
broken his leg, a second had- fallen and sprained an ankle, 
the third lost three of his cows. The neighborhood was up 
in arms ; it was feared that the whole valley would be ruined. 
The hole was instantly filled in, and the spectre returned to 
his den. 

Thirty years of rationalism had not been without their 
effects. There was no open opposition to our project, but 
we had great difficulty in procuring workmen. A farmer 
was found at last who had silent ten years in America ; 
another oifered himself who was going the next week to 
America, and believed that the devil, if devil there were, 
would not follow him to the land of promise ; the Scotch 
keeper and the gardener made two more ; and to work we 
went with pickaxe and crowbar. We were obliged to be 
careful, for the mound having a supernatural reputation had 
been used as a burying-ground during the famine. The 
bodies lay within a few inches of the surface, and the cham- 
bers which we were in search of were far beneath them : 
we sank our shaft, however, out of their way at the extreme 
edge, on the traces of the treasure-seeker, being especially 
anxious to find the iron door. The first thing was to re- 
move the stones which had been flung in to block up the 
entrance ; this took us two hours of hard work : at length 
eight feet down we came on a hole like the mouth of a fox's 
earth. Usually the raths are dry, the situations of them 
having been selected with a view to natural drainage : here 



A Fortnight in Kerry, 365 

the wet had penetrated where the soil had been loosened, 
and to enter we had to crawl through deep mud. A lighted 
candle pushed in at the end of a stick showed that the air 
was fresh. Clusters of boys were hanging round at a re- 
spectful distance, who refused to be bribed to make the first 
venture ; so, disregarding the prayers and denunciations of 
a venerable old patriarch who was looking on in horror, one 
of our own party crawled in. He reported nothing of any 
door or other obstacle ; there was a passage open, leading 
he knew not whither : so we procured a tape to measure 
the distance and guide us back if we lost our way, and en- 
tered in single file. After creeping on our stomachs for a 
few feet in three inches of mud we found ourselves in a cave 
eight feet long, five feet wide, and four feet and a half or 
five feet high ; at the end of it was a second hole, through 
which we could barely squeeze ourselves, leading into a sec- 
ond cave like the first. Beyond this was another and 
another, seven in all : all but the first were dry. 

The floors were covered witli the undisturbed dust of 
centuries. At the far extremity, within a few feet of the 
opposite edge of the mound, was a rude stone fireplace 
with traces of ashes. There was no sign of any other 
opening ; and how a fire could have been lighted in such 
a position without suffocating every one in the place there 
was nothing to show. On the floor lay the remains of the 
last dinner that had been eaten there, a few mussel shells 
and the bones of a sheep's head. That was all. No 
instrument of any kind, of stone, or wood, or metal. 
There were marks of the tools which had been used in the 
excavation, but of the tools themselves, or of the hands in 
which they were held, not a trace. 

What these places could have been baffles conjecture. 
They were not places of concealment, for the situations of 
all of them are purposely conspicuous ; as little could they 
have been forts, for it was but to stop the earths and every 
creature inside must have been stifled. The Dean tells us 



866 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

that, like the present one, they are uniformly empty. 
Once, only, a rnde crucifix was found, but this proves little. 
In the days of persecution, when supernatural terrors were 
more active than they are now, these strange caves might 
have served as safe retreats for hunted priests or friars. 

We came out as wise as we had gone in, save that our 
imaginations could indulge no longer in possible discov- 
eries. We had only inflicted an incurable wound on the 
spiritual temperament of the valley. The already waver- 
ing fliith in the supernatural was confirmed into incredulity. 
We had made a way for skepticism, and another group of 
pious beliefs was withered. 

As we walked home I had a talk with Mr. F. He had 
earned his notoriety by the scale on which he had forced up 
rents, carried out evictions, and brought his vast property 
under economic and paying conditions. To make a prop- 
erty pay in the mountainous parts of Ireland is to drive off 
the inhabitants and substitute sheep for them. I could not 
venture to touch on his personal experience ; or the sen- 
sations of a man who had shot his covers under a guard of 
policemen, and to whom to take a solitary ride had been 
as dangerous as to lead a charge of cavalry, might have 
been curious to inquire into. Our conversation turned 
rather on the social condition of these two islands, with 
their scanty area of soil and their relatively vast popula- 
tion. Mr. F.'s theory had at least the merit of boldness. 
The business and life of the empire, he said, lay in the 
great cities, where the wear and tear and anxiety of work 
became daily more exhausting. Our overtaxed constitu- 
tions required opportunities of escaping the strain close at 
hand and readily available. England, Scotland, and Ire- 
land, therefore, ought to be divided into, on the one hand, 
swarming centres of industry, densely-crowded hives of 
people ; and, on the other, wildernesses, solitudes of moun- 
tain and forest, where the deer ranged free as on the 
prairies, and wearied man could recuperate his energies in 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 367 

contact with primitive nature. It was a complete concep- 
tion expressed without flinching. Artificial solitudes re- 
quire strict exclusiveness. Itinerant tourist parties disturb 
game. Remains of picnic parties, fragments of newspapers, 
and chicken bones, banish the illusions of the picturesque. 
The happy beings, therefore, who can command an en- 
trance into these charmed circles must be the very rich 
and the very few — less than one in a thousand of us — 
while of these few the brain of a large percentage is never 
taxed by a severer effort than the adjustment of a betting 
book, and their services to the community extend no fur- 
ther than the diligent use of their digestive apparatus. 
The resultant good, therefore, is slightly incommensurate 
with the cost of production. Mr. F., however, was but 
stating nakedly the principle on which the Scotch High- 
lands have been now for some time administered. There 
may be other Irish proprietors besides my companion who 
would follow the example if they dared. Were our colo- 
nies brought closer to us, were the enormous area of fertile 
soil belonging to England in all parts of the world made 
accessible by easy and cheap communication, and some 
shreds of our enormous income exj^ended in enabling our 
people to spread, something might be said in defense of 
Mr. F.'s position. At all events, it would not be utterly 
detestable. 

Our conversation came to an abrupt end. The Dean's 
lecture upon the raths had led the rest of the party over 
a wide field of Irish antiquities. We found the subject 
more interesting than politics ; and I myself, whose studies 
happened to have lain in that direction, contributed a story 
which illustrates curiously the condition of Kerry at the 
beginning of the last century. The correspondence in 
which it is contained is preserved in the Record Office, 
where any one who desires further information will find it. 

To the south of Kerry Head, which divides the Bay of 
Tralee from the mouth of the Shannon, lie the long sands 



368 A Fortjiight in Kerry, 

of Ballyhige. The Atlantic waves roll heavily on tlie 
shallow shore. Blown sand-hills covered with grass form 
a bulwark against the sea, behind which low boggy marshes 
stretch for miles. At the north end of the sands, an ele- 
vation of dry ground, where the modern Castle of Bally- 
hige has been since erected, there stood in the year 1730 a 
considerable manor-house, occuj)ied by Mr. Thomas Cros- 
bie. The family of Crosbie was one of the most impor- 
tant in Kerry. They were descended from John Crosbie, 
who was made Bishop of Ardfert by Queen Elizabeth. 
Sir Maurice, the head of the clan, sat in the Irish Par- 
liament for the county, and was son-in-law of the Earl of 
Kerry. Thomas Crosbie of Ballyhige represented Dingle, 
and had married Lady Margaret, sister of the Earl of 
Barrymore. A third seat in another part of the county 
was held by a brother or cousin. Arthur Crosbie, Clerk 
of the Crown for Kerry, who figures in the story which I 
am about to tell, had a son who married a daughter of 
Lord Mornington, and was great uncle to Arthur, Duke of 
Wellington. 

So much for the family connections. Attached to the 
house at Ballyhige was a linen manufactory, managed by 
a resident Scotch agent named Moses Dalrymple. The 
household indicated that Mr. Crosbie was a gentleman of 
good fortune. There was a house steward, a butler, a 
coachman, footmen in livery, and a considerable retinue of 
other servants. 

On October 28, 1730, at five in the morning, a Danish 
East Indiaman, which had been driven into the bay, and 
had failed to weather Kerry Head, came ashore under the 
house. She was powerfully armed and manned, and was 
at first taken for a pirate. But the arms were merely for 
the protection of twelve large chests of silver bullion which 
they were taking out to the East. Her crew were harm- 
less, and were anxious only for the safety of their precious 
cargo. The vessel being strongly built, held together till 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 369 

the tide went back. The Danes, eighty-eight in all, 
scrambled half drowned through the surf with the chests, 
and were looking about for some place of safety to deposit 
them, when they were set upon by the peasantry of the 
neighborhood. The commercial policy of England had 
converted the coast population of Ireland into organized 
gangs of smugglers, and wrecking formed a natural feature 
in the general lawlessness. 

Mr. Crosbie being a man of cliaracter and apparently of 
conscience, rushed to the rescue. With the help of his ser- 
vants and his factory hands he drove off the mob, and 
secured the treasure in his house. Most of the crew went 
to Dublin, and made their way home. The commander, 
Captain Heitman, with his son and a few of the seamen, 
remained in charge of the chests till arrangements could be 
made for their removal. Mr. Crosbie, in his report to the 
government, stated that he had risked his life in saving 
them. He had caught a cold besides in the raw wet morn- 
ing air, which had brought on pleurisy, and he not un- 
naturally presented a heavy claim for salvage. A corre- 
spondence followed between the Dublin Custom-house and 
Copenhagen. Months passed on, and the chests remained 
at Ballyhige, and meanwhile ]Mi\ Crosbie's pleurisy took an 
unfavorable turn, and he died. 

Now, whether it was that there survived in Kerry some 
tradition of Palatine rights, under which property cast up 
by the sea had belonged to the Earls of Desmond and now 
belonged to nobody in particular, and therefore to every- 
body ; or whether, by hesitating about the salvage money, 
the Danes were supposed to have forfeited their own claims ; 
or whether, simply, there was a loose idea that chests of sil- 
ver were chests of silver, and that to neglect windfalls of 
of that kind was a willful tempting of Providence ; however 
it may have been, there grew up on that side of the country, 
among all classes of people, a very general idea that it would 
be well to make their hay while the sun was shining. 
24 



370 A Fortnight m Kerry. 

In the ensuing spring, accordingly, we catch glimpses of 
scenes of this kind. Four or five miles from Ballyhige 
there resided the Reverend Francis Lauder, a justice of the 
peace and Vicar- General of the Bishoj) of Limerick. One 
day in Aj^ril the Vicar- General's steward, named Ryan, with 
a farm servant called Keven, were threshing corn in the 
barn. Some strangers from Tralee lounged in, and Ryan 
went out with them, and when he returned told Keven 
that there was a plot on foot to carry off the Danes' money, 
and asked him to be one of the party. Keven asked what 
the gentlemen of the county would say. Ryan answered 
that, except Lord Kerry, who had not been consulted, all 
the gentlemen had given their consent, the Vicar- General 
included. " Will the gentlemen be present ? " Keven in- 
quired. " Either they or their servants," was the answer. 
" There is no fear of them." 

The next question was of Lady Margaret and the family 
in the house. The servants were all eager, and so was 
young Master James and another young fellow, a cousin 
perhaps, Thomas Crosbie, alias Godly. Lady Margaret's 
views were unknown. She was looked up to in the neigh- 
borhood. No one would act against her inclination, and it 
was necessary to sound her. Lady Margaret, it appears, 
would have preferred to be left in the dark. Banner, the 
butler, undertook to speak to her ; he told her that she had 
only to look through her fingers, and four chests, a third of 
the spoil, would be left for her use. Lady Margaret seemed 
to " abhor the thought." She said loudly, " she would al- 
low no such thing, and would go out in person to prevent it, 
if she was to lose her life." The butler answered, " It would 
be worse for her ladyship, unless she allowed it, for she 
would never get a farthing else." She continued peremp- 
tory in words, but young " Godly " hinted that she was 
chiefly angry at having been taken into confidence unneces- 
sarily. 

Gradually the scheme took shape. One night in May a 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 371 

gang of fifty men stole up through the sand-hills. One of 
them slipped in quietly to speak to the butler. The butler 
went up stairs to consult " Mr. Arthur," the Clerk of the 
Crown, who was asleep in bed. " Mr. Arthur," being in 
the commission of the peace as well, replied that " he would 
not for the world it was done while he was in the house ; 
when he was away, he did not care what they did." " Mr. 
Arthur " took himself off, and left the coast clear. 

The preparations were made with the utmost coolness. 
The Yicar-General's cars and carts were put in readiness. 
The house steward at Ballyhige sent the truckles and 
wheel-barrows to be repaired, as the load would be a heavy 
one. Captain Heitman and his son slept in the house. 
The treasure was in a detached turret at the east end, a 
party of seamen keeping guard over it. The gates being 
left open by the servants on the morning of June 4, an hour 
before dawn, another Crosbie alias Godly — David, per- 
haps Thomas's brother — came up from the sands with a 
party of laborers, gentlemen's servants, and Tralee artisans, 
armed with guns. They made straight for the turret, forced 
the postern with crowbars, killed two of the sailors, and 
wounded a third. Captain Heitman was roused by the 
noise. The butler and young James Crosbie affected ter- 
ror, barricaded the door, and prevented him from stirring. 
The twelve chests were brought out into the yard in the 
gray of the summer morning, and the spoil was divided. 
The robbers, true to their word, portioned off Lady Marga- 
ret's share. Four boxes were hid away for her in the hag- 
gard under the straw, and were afterwards buried in the 
garden ; and a part of one was carried off by David Crosbie 
in a boat to the " Dolphin " sloop, which was waiting in the 
bay. One or two were taken to Tralee or Limerick. The 
rest were distributed between the Vicar's cars and carts and 
taken to his barn, where " the scum," as the rank and file 
of the party were designated, were paid off with a few hand- 
fuls of dollars ; and the remainder, on the ensuing day, was 



872 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

portioned out among the cliief conspirators and tlie gentle- 
men who had consented to wink at them. At first, indeed, 
there was a notion that Lady Margaret's four chests were a 
sufficient acquittance to the great peojjle concerned, and that 
the actors in the scene might keep the residue for them- 
selves. They were given sharply to understand that this 
would not do. The gentlemen sent to know why they had 
not their share given to them, adding it would be worse for 
the robbers if it was not sent. Numbers of persons, it was 
given in evidence, rode up to the barn with scarcely any 
appearance of concealment, and filled their hats and their 
pockets with silver. 

So matters went for a fortnight. The strangest part of 
the story has yet to be told. Lady Margaret wrote in de- 
cent agitation to the authorities in Dublin. Captain Heit- 
man appealed to the county, but the magistrates were 
strangely dilatory. There was loud talking and promising, 
but no one was arrested, and the affair was treated as an 
impenetrable mystery. Lord Carteret, whose term of office 
as Lord-Lieutenant was expired, had returned to England. 
His successor, the Duke of Dorset, had not arrived, and the 
government was in the hands of Irish Lords Justices. The 
Lords Justices appeared most anxious. They sent a sharp 
reprimand to the Kerry magistrates. They directed the 
Earl of Kerry himself to undertake an instant and severe 
inquiry. 

Lord Kerry took up the matter in earnest, with an 
honorable shame at the figure which the county was mak- 
ing. Dissatisfied parties among " the scum " were willing 
to give evidence when any one could be found to receive it. 
Prisoners were taken and examined, the butler of Ballyhige 
and the Vicar- General's steward among them. The whole 
truth was brought out, and on July 31st Mr. Lingen, the 
Chief Commissioner of Customs in Dublin, was able to 
send Lord Kerry his hearty thanks " for the pains he had 
taken in unravelling such an enormous piece of villainy, 
which was now set in the clearest lio;ht." 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 373 

The Danish ingots, however, remained after all too 
strong for justice. The judges came to Tralee to try the 
case, but not a single gentleman was placed at the bar. 
Three or four of the actors were convicted and sentenced 
to be hanged ; but they were respited by private order. 
"It was thought hard that the poor rogues should be 
hanged while the principals escaped." If no one was to be 
punished, Captain Heitman at least expected that the spoils 
should be restored. The government offered a free par- 
don to any person who would assist in recovering it. Im- 
mediately two of the leaders, Ryan, and a man named 
Lalor, who were in gaol at Tralee, confessed and volun- 
teered their services ; and these two scoundrels, who ought 
to have been swinging on the gallows, were at once re- 
leased by order of the Knight of Kerry, Sir Maurice 
Crosbie, and the other magistrates. The entire manage- 
ment of the search was placed in their hands, which they 
took good care should come to nothing, while they went 
about the country talking of their exploit with the utmost 
frankness, and boasting that if it were still to do they would 
do it again. 

Lord Kerry was furious ; re-arrested Ryan and Lalor, 
and reported the magistrates to " the Castle." Sharp re- 
proofs came back, with orders for the two prisoners to be 
sent instantly to Dublin ; but a fatality hung over the 
transaction at every step that was taken in it. The judges 
declared that the assizes being over they had no longer 
power to command the prisoners' removal. The magis- 
trates declined to act. The Knight of Kerry protested 
against "being made instrumental in enthrapping poor 
creatures who had come in on conditions." The Earl of 
Kerry seeing how matters were going, began to fear for 
the consequences to himself. Every one, he said, who had 
been concerned in unravelling the story was alarmed to see 
the chief actors in it thus encouraged. He expected nightly 
to find his own house burninor over his head. 



374 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

The Danish Government took up the matter. Arthur 
Crosbie was prosecuted, tried in Dublin, and acquitted ; 
the judges saying that there was a want of evidence against 
him. The Danes complained that the judges conspired to 
suppress the inquiry, and showed partiality against them 
to shield the Crosbies. 

The Duke of Newcastle did what he could, but the 
English Government could act only through the forms of 
the Irish constitution, and the Crosbies were too strong for 
him. 

A certain quantity of the bullion was recovered, or was 
said to be recovered. Nine thousand pounds in plate and 
money were reported to have been found, and to be lying 
somewhere in a place of security ; but the " somewhere " 
was nowhere so far as the Danes were concerned. 

Either the expenses of the inquiry, or some excuse of 
form rose in the way of every petition which they pre- 
sented. In July 1734, more than three years after the 
robbery, Newcastle complained to Lord Dorset " that the 
master and sailors had not hitherto been able to obtain 
satisfaction for their loss and damage, nor restitution of 
the money and plate recovered." He sent the strictest 
orders that justice should be done without delay. Justice 
never was done. Nobody was punished. FalstafF himself 
had not more objections to " paying back " than the good 
peojDle of Kerry, and the lawyers of the Four Courts, who 
were in conspiracy with them. On the 3d of January, 
1736, the Danish ambassador laid his concluding protest 
before the English prime minister. 

" Your grace," he said, " has many times expressed to 
me your own private indignation at this affair. My master 
now desires me to tell you that if any English vessels hap- 
pen to be lost on the coast of Denmark the Irish Govern- 
ment will be to blame for the consequence which will 
probably befall them." 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 375 

Les complices et principaux auteurs de cet infarae complot 
sont aussy connus a votre grace et aux Seigneurs du Gouverne- 
ment qu'k tout le reste de I'Irlande. Dans une affaire aussy 
odieuse que celle-ci on trouve le moyen par toute sorte de four- 
beries et de chicanes de soustraire a la justice ert a la punition 
meritee les gens les plus notoirement impliquez dans le vol de 
I'argent.i 

I have rambled on incoherently, wishing rather to con- 
vey an idea of the constituents of daily life as they present 
themselves to an English stranger in the wild jDarts of 
Ireland than to tell a consecutive story. As I have ob- 
served little order hitherto, I shall be no less abrupt in the 
rest of what I have to say, and I §hall conclude these 
sketches by a few words on the long-vexed Irish problem. 
I have nothing to propose in the way of remedial meas- 
ures : no measures could be expressed in words which 
could heal a chronic sore as little now as ever disposed to 
heal. I speak merely as one who knows something of 
Ireland, and something of its history. Let it not be sup- 
posed that the late concessions to Irish agitation have 
removed as yet the source of disloyalty. They may have 
been right in themselves — I do not question it; but the 
wound remains, and will remain. The Irish, as a body, 
are disloyal to the English Crown, and disloyal they will, 
for some time at least, continue. The Church Bill was the 
removal of a scandal ; the Land Bill will rescue the poorer 
tenants from the tyranny of middlemen and adventurers 
chiefly of their own race ; but the people generally regard 
these Bills, both of them, as extorted from us by the Clerk- 
enwell ex23losion. They do not thank us for them. They 
rather gather courage to despise us for our fears. Their 
sympathies on all subjects are in antagonism to ours. If 
we are entangled in a war, they will rejoice in our defeat ; 
and they will do their worst or their best, whatever their 
worst or best may be, to forward our misfortunes. 

1 The Minister of Denmark to the Duke of Newcastle, Janiiarj' 3, 1736, 
aiS. Record Office. 



376 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

England had one great opportunity of thorough] y assimi- 
lating Ireland to herself, and she threw it willfully away. 
The Celts, who had been conquered by the Normans, re- 
covered their power and part of their lands when England 
was convulsed by the Wars of the Roses. The great Nor- 
man families maintained themselves by adopting their man- 
ners and their cause, and intermarrying with their families. 
The Tudor princes had to contend with the hostility of the 
united island, and the struggle for sujDremacy continued till 
it closed in the decisive subjugation of the Irish race after 
the battle of the Boyne. The Irish party, Celts and Cath- 
olics, were totally broken ; their leaders went abroad and 
took service in foreign armies ; the restless spirits were 
perennially drafted off into the Irish brigade on the Con- 
tinent ; their lands were distributed among Scotch and 
English immigrants ; their creed was proscribed ; and for 
the first half of the eighteenth century the Celts were of no 
more account in their own island than the negroes in the 
Southern States of America before emancipation. The 
penal laws in the present state of opinion have become as 
execrable as slavery : they are mentioned only with shame 
and regret : yet the essential injustice in yet more impor- 
tant matters with which the poor country was trampled 
upon by England at the time that they were in force was 
yet more execrable than the penal laws. After a hundred 
and seventy years of intermittent rebellion, massacre, and 
confusion, something might be said in favor of severe 
coercion. It was natural to seek for a perpetual removal 
of disturbing causes which were ineradicable except by 
excision. Yet, if it was found necessary to confiscate an 
entire country, to prohibit the exercise of its religion, to 
create a new proprietary, to sow the four provinces with 
colonies of aliens of another race and another creed, the 
justification of those stern measures was to be looked for 
only in the most unrelaxed exertions to benefit morally 
and materially the people who were so cruelly held down 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 377 

'— to develop their industry, to teach them a purer faitli, 
to make them feel that the conquerors whom they had re- 
sisted so desperately were, after all, their best and truest 
friends. At the close of the seventeenth century a third of 
the population of Ireland were Scots and English, French 
and Flemings — all Protestants. They had nine tenths 
of the land ; they possessed all the skill, knowledge, enter- 
prise, and capital : they were covering the country with 
flocks and herds ; they were growing flax on a great scale ; 
they had established a lucrative foreign trade ; they had 
founded woolen and linen manufactories which were em- 
ploying tens of thousands of people ; and by the laws of 
natural expansion, had they been allowed to grow, they 
would have absorbed and provided with organized occupa- 
tion the entire nation. They were sturdy Protestants, as 
I said — not lukewarm Anglicans misbegotten out of com- 
promise, but men tried in the fire ; sturdy Calvinists, who 
held the traditions of the Ironsides. Had such a race as 
these been allowed fair play, had England only abstained 
from interfering with them, it is absurd to doubt that the 
Celts of Ireland, broken down as they were, without 
leaders, mere heljDless, ignorant peasants, would have 
yielded to the superior intelligence and irresistible influence 
of their masters, as their brothers of the same race yielded 
in Wales and the Highlands. 

Worried as England had so long been by the Irish diffi- 
culty, it might have been thought that she would have re- 
joiced at last to see the troubles there so happily composed, 
and would have exerted herself to build vigorously upon a 
foundation which had been laid so fortunately at last. But 
the victory had been too complete. The mercantile element 
in English legislation, — always short-sighted, always mean, 
always preferring the base profits of individuals, I will not 
say to duty and high principle, for that is not to be expected, 
but to patriotism and national interest, — took advantage 
of Ireland's political weakness to destroy in the germ her 



378 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

promise of prosperity. English ship owners took alarm at 
the growth of Irish commerce, — English mill owners at the 
dimensions of her woolen fabrics. Possessed as Ireland was 
of cheap labor and inexhaustible water-power, they found 
that she could undersell them in the world's markets, and 
the dread of diminished profits drove them mad with jeal- 
ousy. The woolen factories were nipped in the bud by pro- 
hibitive statutes. The industrial immigration was not only 
checked, but twenty thousand skilled Protestant artisans 
already settled in the North moved instantly back across 
the Channel. Driven from their manufactures, the settlers 
turned their hands to the growth of raw material and mul- 
tiplied their sheep. Again they were forbidden to export 
their wool to any country except England, and in England 
only to a few selected ports. These are but a few instances 
of the detailed tyranny by which Irish industry was broken 
down. The prospects of Ireland were deliberately sacri- 
ficed to fill the pockets of a few English rich men. In 
Kerry, Cork, and Gal way, and all round the coast, the gen- 
tlemen were driven into smuggling and consequent lawless- 
ness as the inevitable result of the repression of their legiti- 
mate emjDloyments, and the wretched natives were forced 
back upon their potato gardens as their only means of sub- 
sistence. 

Spiritual matters went the same road. If the Irish 
Church was not oppressed in the same sense, it was op- 
pressed in a worse ; for the benefices, high and low, were 
distributed as patronage to make provision for jDcrsons who 
could not decently be promoted in England. The princi- 
ple on which the vacant places in the hierarchy were sup- 
plied is immortalized in the bitter scorn of Dean Swift. 
The English Government, he said, nominated highly proper 
persons ; but the reverend gentlemen were waylaid by the 
highwaymen on Hounslow Heath, who cut their throats, 
stole their papers, and came over and were inducted in their 
places. When the Church could hold no more, tiiere were 



A Fortnight in Kerry. 379 

the Irish revenues to fall back upon. "Wretched Ireland 
was compelled to place upon its pension list every scanda- 
lous blackguard who, in unmentionable or unproducible 
ways, had laid the Court or Cabinet of St. James's under 
obligation. 

Thus, hard as it might have seemed to ruin so fair a pros- 
pect, the English Government succeeded in doing it. The 
Protestant immigrants were driven back upon the Celts by 
this ingenious variety of ill-usage, and made common cause 
with them against a tyranny which had grown intolerable 
to both. In spite of the government, their mere presence 
in Ireland had produced astonishing improvement. They 
had ruled, if not perfectly, yet with intelligence and justice, 
far greater than anything which had been known under the 
dominion of the chiefs. They maintained political order 
while England was convulsed with rebellion. The popula- 
tion increased threefold in ninety years. The selling value 
of the land rose in places twenty and thirty fold. Ireland 
in 1782 was still in essentials a Protestant country. Grat- 
tan's volunteers were Protestants. Even the United Irish- 
men of 1798 were most of them Protestants ; but they had 
been driven into revolt by England's unendurable folly ; 
and, cut off as they were from the source of their strength, 
their ascendancy inevitably declined. The era of agitation 
recommenced. The Celts raised their heads again. Their 
relative numbers multiplied; they became once more the 
dominant race of the island. The Anglo-Irish authority, 
established so hardly, became a thing of the past, and the 
history of the last half-century has been of the recovery, 
step by step, by the Celtic and Catholic population, of the 
powers which had seemed gone from them forever. The 
country has fallen back into the condition in which William 
found it, and the families of the old blood inevitably have 
resumed the aspirations which they displayed in the last 
Parliament of James. 

England deserves what has come upon her ; yet the two 



380 A Fortnight in Kerry. 

islands must remain where Nature placed them. They are 
tied together like an ill-matched pair between whom no 
divorce is possible. Must they continue a thorn in each 
other's side till doomsday ? Are the temperaments of the 
races so discordant that the secret of their reconciliation is 
forever undiscoverable ? 

The present hope is, that by assiduous " justice " — that 
is, by conceding everything which the Irish please to ask 
— we shall disarm their enmity and convince them of our 
good-will. It may be so. There are persons sanguine 
enough to hope that the Irish will be so moderate in what 
they demand, and the English so liberal in what they will 
grant, that at last we shall fling ourselves into each other's 
arms in tears of mutual forgiveness. I do not share that 
expectation. It is more likely that they will press their 
importunities till we turn upon them and refuse to yield 
further. There will be a struggle once more ; and either 
the emigration to America will increase in volume till it has 
carried the entire race beyond our reach, or in some shape 
or other they will again have to be coerced into submission. 
This only is certain, — that the fortunes of the two islands 
are inseparably linked. Ireland can never be independent 
of England, nor is it likely that a fuller measure of what is 
called freedom will make Irishmen acquiesce more gra- 
ciously in their forced connection with us. 

It is said that in a country where liberty and equality 
were carried out in greatest perfection, a gentleman who 
had succeeded to the management of an excellent pack of 
foxhounds considered that he could not do better than ap- 
ply the popular principle to his new charge. He went one 
day to the kennel. " My dear hounds," he said, " you have 
been kept in slavery — the finest part of your nature has 
been destroyed for want of your natural rights — you have 
been taken out when you wished to stay at home — you 
have not been consulted either about your victuals or your 
lodging — you have been sent after foxes when you would 



A Fortnight in Kerry, 381 

have preferred hares — you have been treated as if you 
were mere dogs rather than as rational and responsible be- 
ings : I am going to alter that — I shall put before you 
what is right, but I shall leave you to take your own way if 
you prefer it, and you shall each of you vote every morning 
exactly what you like to do — you shall be admitted to 
your, birthright of freedom, and you shall decide according 
to your own ideas how you like to pass your lives." The 
pack, it is needless to say, after worrying all the sheep in 
the neighborhood, ended by tearing each other to pieces. 

All of us are the better for authority. In schools and 
colleges, in fleet and army, discipline means success, and 
anarchy means ruin. The House of Commons has its 
whips, who might apply their instruments more frequently 
with nothing but advantage. The Irish have many faults : 
they have one predominant virtue. There is no race in the 
world whose character responds more admirably to govern- 
ment, or suffers more injury from the absence of it. It 
was an Irishman, who, when some one said, " One man 
was as good as another," exclaimed, " Aye, and better too." 
He understands himself, if no else understands him. He is 
the worst of leaders, but the truest and most loyal of fol- 
lowers. In the past he was devoted to his chiefs ; in the 
present his allegiance is waiting for any one who will boldly 
claim it. Govern him firmly and justly — make him feel 
that you mean to be his master, not for your sake, but for 
his, that you may save him from himself, and you need have 
no more anxiety about him. The wildest village boy that 
ever flung up his cap for O'Donovan Rossa has but to be 
caught, laid under discipline, and dressed in policeman's uni- 
form, to be true as steel. 



ENGLAND'S WAR. 



When the last shot had been fired at Waterloo, Great 
Britain was indisputably the first Power in the world. 
From that day to this we have run a career, almost without 
a check, of what has been called unexampled prosperity. 
Yet at the end of these fifty-five years English officers tell 
us that they can scarcely show their faces at a table d'hote 
in Germany without danger of affront. English opinion is 
without weight. English power is ridiculed. Our influ- 
ence in the councils of Europe is a thing of the past. We 
are told, half officially, that it is time for us to withdraw 
altogether from the concerns of the Continent ; while, on 
the other side of the Atlantic, Mr. Emerson calmly inti- 
mates to an approving audience, that the time is not far off 
when the Union must throw its protecting shield over us in 
our approaching decrepitude. We are still able to make 
ourselves hated ; we cannot save ourselves from being de- 
spised ; and, however we may resent the attitude which the 
world is assuming towards us, we are painfully aware that 
we owe our exemption from immediate danger to our geo- 
graphical position alone, and that if our fleet were acci- 
dentally disabled, and a well-appointed army of a hundred 
thousand men were thrown upon our shores, we could offer 
no effective resistance. We are perplexed, impatient, irri- 
tated ; and with perfect justice. We are not conscious of 
any serious decay in our national character and spirit ; we 
have not been niggardly in our supplies ; even in our hu- 
mors of extremest economy we vote sums annually for our 
military service which suffice elsewhere to provide troops in 



England's War, 383 

any numbers of the most admirable efficiency. There are 
some among us who conceive that we should catch at the 
first available opportunity, the first affi'ont or diplomatic em- 
broilment to court a quarrel for its own sake, as if the dis- 
cipline of war would rouse us out of our lethargy, put life 
into our languid movements, and enable us to let the nations 
know that our arms have not lost their sinew nor our hearts 
their, courage. 

Only a few years ago, when the Exhibition of 1851 was 
opened in Hyde Park, we were supposed to be standing on 
the threshold of a new era. Commerce and free trade were 
to work a revolution which Christianity had tried to pro- 
duce, and failed. "War was to be at an end forever, and the 
inhabitants of the earth were to compete thenceforward only 
in the arts of peace. The world smiled kindly on our enthu- 
siasm, or seemed to share our expectations. When the first 
unsuccessful cable was laid across the Atlantic, the single 
message which it bore from Washington to England was 
" Peace on earth, and good-will towards men." The peace 
proved a cycle of storms which in one quarter or another 
have raged since scarcely with intermission, and, though at 
home our streak of sea has stood our friend, we have borne 
our share already in the East, and danger may very easily 
come to seek us at our own doors without our going out of 
the way to look for it. Many idle wars have been under- 
taken at one time or another for the sake of national pres- 
tige ; but the notion of going into such a business for the 
sake of the moral improvement of our characters would 
have occurred to no one but an Englishman in the second 
half of the nineteenth century. If we are suifering from 
the " long canker of peace," it is to be hoped there are other 
ways of curing it besides sacrificing hundreds of thousands 
of our own people, and killing hundreds of thousands of 
others. 

Before we look for enemies abroad we have enemies to 
make war upon among ourselves, or we shall gather little 



38-t EnglanoCs War. 

iionor or profit in any other field of glory. And when 
our home war is over, when we have tracked out and dis- 
armed the real sources of our weakness, we shall find per- 
haps that both our moral health and our prestige abroad 
will have returned in the process without need of a more 
desperate remedy. 

We are not respected because we are supposed to be 
powerless. Why are we powerless? We have money 
without limit, we have coal and iron, and with them ample 
command of all mechanical resources ; and to make use of 
these things we have thirty millions of men and women in 
our own islands, and ten millions besides in our colonies, 
of a race which in times of trial has been found at least 
equal to any other upon earth. Individuals among us, or 
voluntary combinations which we form among ourselves 
for special purposes, do their work punctually and effec- 
tively. Private English enterprise built up our Indian 
Empire, founded English-speaking communities in every 
quarter of the globe, realized in steamships, as Emerson 
says, the fable of -bolus's bag, and inclosed the four-and- 
twenty winds in their boilers ; invented railroads and the 
telegraph, and in this very crisis of our supposed decadence 
holds a virtual monopoly of the commerce of mankind. 
Our time of degeneracy may come. We may founder on 
the rock on which every other commercial community has 
made shipwreck before us, and perish in the greediness of 
money-making. But the evil day has not yet arrived. 
The poison may be in the skin, but it has not touched the 
bones. Individual Englishmen can still do what they un- 
dertake to do as effectively as when English statesmen 
ruled the resolutions of the Congress of Vienna. Indi- 
viduals, unless when they are deliberately dishonest, are as 
capable as ever they were ; but the business of national 
defense belongs to the government, and the touch of the 
Government is like the touch of a torpedo, sending paraly- 
sis through the nerves and veins of every organization ^ 

1 The Post Office is the single exception. The adniirahle managemen*^ 



England's War. 385 

which it ventures to meddle with. Here is the seat of the 
disorder, and here, if anywhere, it must be encountered. 

All nations have their idols, the creatures of their own 
hands, which, having manufactured, they bow down before 
as gods. The Spanish peasant adores his image of the 
Virgin. The Englishman adores the British Constitution. 
It is his ideal of political perfection, and under the shadow 
of it, when it was once finished, he believed that he would 
be safe from the malice of his earthly enemies. The 
origin of the satisfaction in both instances is probably the 
same. Each is well pleased with a divinity which cannot 
mterfere with him. So far as we are concerned at home, 
we have taken very good care that the government shall 
be as powerless as the doll. We are contented to believe 
that we cannot have both good government and liberty ; 
and liberty we think the better of the two. 

There are persons who would reverse the position en- 
tirely, and maintain that good government was the essential 
of liberty — that there was no liberty in any human com- 
munity without it. That, however, is not the present 
opinion of the citizens of the British Empire. So far as 
our domestic administration is concerned, we select, indeed, 
some conspicuous person to act at the head of each de- 
partment ; but we usually interpose so many checks upon 
his activity that he is virtually powerless. Had he the 
strength of a steam engine, unless he had Parliament in a 
state of excitement at his back, that strength would be 
exhausted in friction, and would issue in acts soft as the 
touch of a three-year-old child. 

Nor, indeed, would it seem wise, according to the prin- 
ciples on which Ministers are selected for their several 
posts, to trust them with larger powers than they possess. 
The Lord Chancellor, indeed, is necessarily the most emi- 
nent person in the legal profession who can be found 

of the Post Office is an evidence of what government can do in a matter 
in which the nation cannot afford to be trifled with. 
25 



386 England's War. 

among the adherents of the party in power ; but all the 
remaining seats in the Cabinet are treated simply as the 
prizes of the Parliamentary campaign, and are distributed, 
not only without reference to the special acquaintance with 
their subjects of the persons who are to occupy them, but 
with a disregard of all particular qualifications so cynical 
as to show that the possession of fitness for the work is 
held a matter of no consequence whatsoever. In the 
House of Commons there are some eminent engineers, 
some eminent merchants and bankers ; but an engineer is 
not selected for the Board of Works, or a banker for the 
Exchequer. Cabinets are not. composed of distinguished 
soldiers or sailors, distinguished men of business, or men 
of science. When a Ministry is formed, the selection lies 
between peers of great territorial influence, for whom places 
must be found as the price of their support to the party, 
and politicians remarkable for readiness of speech, debating 
power, and dexterity in influencing divisions. The object 
of the party in office is to secure its working majority in 
the Lower House ; and this or that prominent person has 
to be provided for — to be appointed, that is, to the head- 
ship of some important department of public business, 
though he may be guiltless of the faintest acquaintance 
with the work which he undertakes to guide, and though 
his claim to the situation be merely some Parliamentary 
service which it is necessary to reward, or the possession 
of debating abilities which it may be dangerous to drive 
into opposition. 

Pieced together as the members of the Cabinet are, 
upon such terms as these, we are not surprised afterwards 
at any fresh redistribution of seats which may take place 
in them. We see noble lords and right honorable gen- 
tlemen shifted from one department to another — a Colonial 
Minister goes to the War Office or the Foreign Office, an 
Irish Secretary to the Board of Trade, either as if these 
high officials had been trained into omniscience and were 



England's War. 887 

masters of every subject which could be entrusted to them, 
or as if they were like the Tulchan bishops in Scotland, 
stuffed figures, intended to do nothing but draw their 
salaries and impose on the simjDlicity of fools, while the 
most singular part of the business is that all this passes as 
a matter of course. It is one of the outcomes of the most 
perfect constitution which the world has ever seen, and we 
are so unreasonable as to expect that public business shall 
be conducted successfully under a system which would 
bring a private commercial company to immediate ruin. 
If Sir William Armstrong requires a manager at one of 
his foundries at Newcastle he does not pick out a man who 
knows nothing of mechanics ; the captain of a Cunarder is 
at least expected to understand navigation ; but a noble 
lord may be set to preside over the War Office who at the 
date of his appointment did not know the difference be- 
tween a brigade and a company. In a few months, when 
his work has become less entirely strange to him, he is re- 
moved perhaps to the India Office and made supreme ruler 
of our Eastern Empire. How India may fare under his 
administration no one cares to ask or think : so long as he 
can be crammed by a subordinate, and skillfully reply to in- 
convenient questions in Parliament, he answers every pur- 
pose which either his chief or his country expects of him. 

The consequence of this method of managing public 
business is precisely what might be expected ; and now 
the British public, which looked upon it as natural and 
reasonable, is oddly surprised at the inevitable result. The 
state of the army is at present distracting us. We spend 
fifteen millions annually upon it — more than France spent 
under the empire, a great deal more than Prussia spends ; 
and the result is, or was a short time ago, a mob of 
militia and volunteers, fifty thousand really available 
troops, and malice says, perhaps with some exaggeration, 
six batteries of field-guns. What else could we expect? 
The army indeed is distinguished above all the depart- 



388 England's War, 

ments by the singularity of its management. The army 
has two chiefs — one, selected as other Cabinet Ministers, 
a civilian, who by the nature of the case can know nothing 
of his duties ; the other — well, there is no occasion to say 
anything of the other. But if England requires a real 
army she need not vote another shilling, but she must 
abolish once and forever all leaderships of incapable or 
gilded phantoms : she must look for the ablest soldier that 
she possesses, who has devoted his life to his profession. 
She must not ask him if he can make a speech in Parlia- 
ment : she should rather insist that he and Parliament 
should be held as far apart as possible ; she must require 
only that he understand thoroughly in all its parts and re- 
quirements the business of war ; and, being satisfied on that 
point, she must give him authority to carry out what may 
be necessary without the liability of being called to ac- 
count on every detail by the amateur critics of the House 
of Commons. She must resolve, or she must allow him to 
resolve, upon an organized method which has been thought 
out in all its parts, and when decided on shall be strictly 
adhered to — not chopped and changed from ^ session to 
session to suit the budget of the Chancellor of the Excheq- 
uer, or catch the votes or the applause of the million. 

There woidd then, it is said, be no responsibility. 
Rather, res^^onsibility would then for the first time come 
really into being ; the country would know the person to 
whom it had distinctly delegated its powers, and could call 
him to account for the use which he had made of them. 
She would not displace him when he was doing his work 
effectively because the Prime Minister happened to be de- 
feated in the House of Commons on some irrelevant ques- 
tion. She had appointed him to his post to create an effec- 
tive army. If he had provided the army ; if it was there 
in adequate numbers, with its appointments in sound condi- 
tion, ready to take the field at home or abroad when Eng- 
land required its services, she would know that she had the 



England's War, 389 

right man in the place, and, having got him, would keep 
him there. If after time given there was still no army, but 
only the expenses of an army, with nothing realized but 
promises, imaginations, and expectations, then she would 
put him away, punish him if necessary for having abused 
her confidence, at any rate remove him and put a better 
man in his place. 

The army. just now is our most pressing consideration; 
but the War Otfice is only one department out of many in 
which organization and authority are alike imperatively de- 
manded. The present theory of England's duty in the 
world is that we should attend to our own business, and 
keep out of our neighbors' way so long as they will keep 
out of ours. And the notion is that we are a people emi- 
nently qualified for self-government — that each and all of 
us separately and collectively have only to be left to our- 
selves, and the result will be universal harmony. We are 
supposed to have arrived at that high stage of civilization 
that we approach the condition of the gregarious animals, 
where each individual of the community falls naturally into 
its place, and contributes automatically or instinctively to 
the general structure of society. Streams of omnibuses, 
carts, carriages, and pedestrians pass to and fro at all hours 
of the day and night along Holborn and the Strand, meet- 
ing each other, evading each other, passing one another, 
without aid of the policeman, yet with rare collisions and 
rarer injury — unless, perhaps, to the few hundred children, 
old women, and decrepit persons who are annually run over 
and maimed or killed. Let the traffic be interrupted, how- 
ever briefly, and the damming back of that enormous human 
tide would be as if a bank were thrown across the Thames. 
But there is no confusion and no disorder ; every one goes 
on his way quietly, and arrives punctual as clockwork at 
the point at which he is aiming. The steamers go and 
come through the crowded Pool ; their cargoes are loaded 
or uidoaded exact to the hour or the minute ; their days of 



390 England's War. 

arrival and days of departure from every port in tlie world 
are laid down and observed with astonishing precision. 
Our affairs seem to manage themselves, if only they are not 
interfered with ; and thus the notion has risen that the 
functions of government are zero, that it can meddle only 
for mischief. Such a government as we possess at present 
doubtless acts discreetly in keeping its hands off. The in- 
trusion of it would work nothing but mischief; but if the 
details, for instance, of the management of the Cunard line 
are looked into, there is no lack of authority — rather there 
is stringent order and exact obedience, and when supervis- 
ion slackens there is instant failure and confusion. Much 
indeed we are able to do for ourselves, but a juster infer- 
ence from our managing capacity would be that there is no 
people upon earth who value organization more highly, or 
among whom an intelligent government, in that large de- 
partment of things which will not manage themselves, could 
interfere with more ease or with more result. 

Even if we were all honest, great multitudes of human 
beings cannot congregate together without intricacy of re- 
lations arising which individuals are unable to cope with, 
or without breeding positive mischiefs which they have 
neither leisure nor power to remove. Private persons and 
private companies look to their own interests. Cholera 
and cattle plague start up suddenly to teach us that the 
commonwealth has further interests of its own, which if 
neglected bring universal ruin. 

But to leave matters of this kind, and confine ourselves 
to common honesty. The thing which we call self-govern- 
ment is driving some of us into considering whether, if 
life is not to become unendurable, we should not do bet- 
ter to collect our worldly goods together and move off 
to some other locality where scoundrelism has a less easy 
time of it. Past mutinies have been against tyrannical gov- 
ernments : but another and more respectable mutiny may 
break out one day against anarchy and no government at 



Migland's -War. 391 

all. Every nation secretes its percentage of rascals, and the 
plea on which authority exists, on which it levies taxes on 
the subject, and is itself maintained in honor, is to hold such 
persons in some kind of check : yet it seems nowadays as 
if government was unable to recognize the rascal unless he 
takes the shape of the cut-throat, a burglar, or a forger, 
while the masters of the art thrive as they never throve be- 
fore, carry about unblemished reputations, and, instead of 
finding their necks in the halter or the pillory, pile up enor- 
mous fortunes, make their way into the House of Commons, 
and live and die in honor. 

We Londoners are poisoned in the water which we drink, 
poisoned in the gas with which we light our houses ; we are 
poisoned in our bread, poisoned in our milk and butter, 
poisoned in our beer, jjoisoned in the remedies for wliich, 
when these horrible compounds have produced their conse- 
quences, we, in our simplicity, apply to our druggists ; while 
the druggists are in turn cheated by the swindling rogues 
that supply their medicines. We have escaped, some of us, 
out of the hands of our grocers, for in despair we have set 
up establishments of our own. The grocers, we perceive, 
threaten us with actions for conspiring to defraud them of 
their honest gains. There was a time when drunkenness 
was as rare in England as it is now in France or Spain. 
Eighty millions a year are now spent among us upon wine 
and spirits and malt liquor, five sixths of it perhaps by the 
working-men upon stuff called beer and gin. The artisan 
or the journeyman, exhausted by the gas-poisoned air with 
which his lungs are loaded, and shrinking, when his day's 
work is over, from the stifling chamber which is all that 
society can afford as lodging for him and his family, turns 
aside as he goes home, to the pot-house or the gin-palace. 
His watered beer is raised to double strength again by nux 
vomica and cocculus indicus, and salted to make his thirst 
insatiable. His gin is yet some viler mixture — a minimum 
of pure spirit seasoned with white vitriol and oil of cinna- 



392 England's War. 

mon and cayenne. Drunk, and with empty pockets, he 
staggers home at last to his wife, who must feed and clothe 
herself and him and his miserable family with the few shil- 
lings which she can rescue out of his weekly wages. She, 
too, often enough grows desperate, and takes to drinking 
also. The result is that half the children born in England 
die before they are five years old. It is found that the milk 
supplied to the London workhouses for the pauper children 
Is shamefully watered. An honorable member speaks of it 
in the House of Commons as an " exposure," and calls for 
inquiry. Mr. Stansfield, speaking for the Ministry, com- 
plains of " exposure " as too hard a word, and denies that 
watered milk is adulterated, because water is not a delete- 
rious substance. It is true that pure milk is to children a 
necessary of life, and those who are not supplied with it die. 
Such a death, however, is of course natural, and the parish 
is relieved of the expense. 

There are laws, we are told, by which the men who do 
these things can be punished. Quid leges sine morihus 
proficiunt ? or, rather. What are laws good for without a 
public prosecutor to enforce them ? What can we unfortu- 
nates hope for when another right honorable gentleman, 
whose especial business it was to look after trade and com- 
merce, could speak almost complacently of adulteration as 
a natural result of competition ? The collectors of our gas 
rates and water rates laugh in our faces at our feeble re- 
monstrances. The companies are bound by their charters 
to filter the water and purify the gas. The collectors tell 
us it pays better to supply us with the present article. The 
shareholder prefers ten and twelve per cent, to seven. The 
brewing interests, the publican interests, the moneyed 
interests generally, are too powerful in the House of Com- 
mons for a Minister to dare to oifend them. The Ministers 
in general too faithfully represent the body which gives 
them their being. 

Or, indeed, the fault may be traced higher ; and, when 



England's War. 393 

we see the true source of it, we may well sit down in de- 
spair. Under no circumstances, perhaps, could there be 
anything but misgovernment when the supreme authority, 
legislative and executive, was held by a miscellaneous body 
of six hundred and fifty gentlemen. But the House of 
Commons at present is a club, to which money is the sure 
and almost the only passport : the wolves are made the 
watch-dogs of the sheep ; and the sheep are so fond of being 
devoured, that there is scarcely a constituency in England 
which, if offered a choice between St. Paul and Dives, 
would not return Dives by an overwhelming majority. 
The voters may themselves be j)Oor ; they may know that 
they can never be anything except poor ; but the rich man 
embodies the qualities which they honor at the bottom of 
their hearts. Great wealth is regarded with the self- 
surrendering and' disinterested devotion which used to be 
felt for God Almighty. 

But Parliament, however careful to tie the hands of 
ministers who might interfere with matters inconveniently 
at home, is less unconiiding or more indifferent in concerns 
which do not immediately affect the personal interests of 
its members. The selections for every department are 
equally independent of considerations of specific qualifica- 
tions. But the range of action which is permitted either 
for good or evil varies considerably and momentously. 
The Home Office is practically powerless. The Minister 
for India, if he chooses, may be almost as absolute as the 
Mogul whom he succeeds. The House of Commons, when 
the dominions of the Company were transferred to the 
Crown, became the sovereign of the Eastern Empire. 
It received two hundred millions of human beings as its 
subjects, with fifty millions of revenue ; yet a debate on the 
game laws creates ten times more excitement at St. Ste- 
phen's than the discussion of the most momentous question 
connected with India. When an Indian matter is brought 
for^^ard the House subsides at once into apathy, and would 



394 Ungland's War. 

endure perhaps with more fortitude to hear that we had 
abandoned our entire Eastern possessions than that it had 
been found necessary to suppress Tattersall's or abolish the 
Derby. Thus as to India the minister is secure from in- 
terference ; and if the result were only that the fittest 
person who could be found was sent to Calcutta, and left 
free to act by his own and his Council's judgment, the in- 
difference of Parliament would be the surest guarantee for 
good administration. The government of a conglomera- 
tion of nations of various creeds, races, and temperaments, 
agreeing only in a fundamental difference of character and 
habit of thought from Europeans, can be conducted only 
with the slightest hope of success by men who have had 
experience of the Asiatic temperament, and who are on 
the spot to decide at any moment upon measures which 
may be immediately necessary. Yet over the head of the 
Viceroy and Council it has been thought a wise and in- 
telligent thing to place a minister at home — a noble lord 
or right honorable gentleman, who three months ago may 
have been in the Privy Council, and two months hence may 
be at the Post Office — whose unacquaintance with the 
duties of either of these offices may only be equaled by 
his self-confidence, and who is left practically to himself 
to do whatever he pleases. The electric telegraph, it was 
said a few years since, would make us safe in India. Any 
threatening danger would be instantaneously known, and 
the army could be instantaneously reinforced. On the 
other side it is no less true that if we lose India the electric 
telegraph will lose it for us. 

A Cabinet Minister is at present the representative of 
some temporarily prevailing form of public opinion — ■ 
opinion formed in England, in the spirit of the philosophy 
of the hour, formed lightly and hastily, not on funda- 
mental and circumstantial acquaintance with the facts, but 
under the influence of the theories or emotions which hap- 
pen for the moment to be fashionable. Himself the crea- 



England's War. 395 

ture of opinion, he becomes the exponent of it in act. He 
is doubtless clever. Talent of some kind is to be presumed 
in any man who has made his way into the first rank of 
English statesmen. He believes in the system out of which 
he has sprung : he acts boldly and confidently in the spirit 
with which he personally sympathizes ; and thus the in- 
structed insight of the Indian Government is liable to be 
overruled in details at every moment by a statesman ten 
thousand miles off, to whom India was but lately a name, 
and their public policy controlled by the half-informed or 
entirely ignorant crudity of our domestic popular sentiment. 
At present, in our enthusiasm for self-government, we im- 
agine that our Eastern subjects are by and by to learn to 
govern themselves as we do. We are their trustees while 
they are in their political infancy. Our duty is to train 
them in our own image, that when they are fit to receive 
their inheritance we may pass it over into their own hands. 
The Asiatic, we are persistently told, is the inferior of the 
European only in the disadvantages with which he has 
been surrounded. If he be educated, educated as we are 
educated, lifted gradually into freedom, with his rights and 
his powers enlarged as he shows himself capable of their 
exercise, we shall elevate him into an equality with our- 
selves, and our own mission will be ended. The secret of 
superiority being intellectual cultivation, we must teach 
him in schools like our own : as he shows proficiency, we 
must open out the avenues of power to him — admit him 
to the privileges and authority of our own civil servants. 
The competitive examination system is the idol of modern 
progress. We believe ourselves to have found it the most 
perfect method of sifting out our own best men. The ex- 
periment, it is true, has been tried among Asiatics in China 
for a thousand years, and has produced the weakest and 
most corrupt government which the world has ever seen, 
But- 
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Catliay ; 



396 England's War, 

better the doubtful and incomplete experiences of one gen- 
eration at home than the broad results painted upon history. 
What is good or determined to be good among ourselves 
must be good universally ; and therefore, not only has pop- 
ular opinion, expressing itself through the India Office, de- 
cided that the Hindoos shall be admitted to share in the gov- 
ernment of our Eastern Empire, but they shall be admitted 
by the road of competitive examination. The introduction 
of them, it is held, will be a guarantee of the excellence of 
our intentions, — will strengthen our present tenure, and 
facilitate the transfer when the hour for its accomplishment 
shall have struck. We dream that we can teach Asiatics to 
appreciate constitutional liberty, and submit hereafter will- 
ingly to their intellectual fellow-countrymen whom we are 
educatino^ to be their future masters. 

Those who have formed their opinions on the spot, and 
not in England, tell us that the cultivated Bengalees, who 
beat our own students in metaphysics and philosophy and 
mathematics, would have as much chance of governing India, 
if the arm that supports them were withdrawn, as a handful 
of tame sheep of ruling quietly over a nation of lions. A 
sinole Sikh horseman would drive a thousand of them with 
the butt-end of his lance from one end of the Peninsula to 
the other. Native officials selected by competition, as they 
can hope for no future when we are gone, so add nothing to 
our stability while we remain, but are one more superadded 
source of weakness. The warlike races of India may hate 
Englishmen, but cannot despise them, for in their own arts 
we are stronger than they. These weak beings, with the 
heads of professors and the hearts of hares, they both despise 
and hate, and hate us with increased intensity for imposing 
on them the authority of wretches whom they disdain as 
slaves. Yet it may easily be, — rumor says, we hope un- 
truly, that the system is already begun, — it may easily be 
that the Indian Minister, with his sails blown full by Eng- 
lish vapor, not only may persist in admitting these people to 



England's War. 39T 

high offices of state by the examination method, but may 
lend them additional and peculiar facilities for distancing 
competitors from home. 

Our Indian Empire was won by the sword, and by tlie 
sword it must be held; and to suppose that we can ever 
abandon it except in defeat and disgrace is to surrender our- 
selves willfully to the wildest illusion. Dilettante politicians, 
armed with an authority which they ought never to have 
possessed, meddling with matters which the modesty of true 
intelligence would have forbidden them to touch, may tie 
tlie hands of the true rulers of that empire, — may be car- 
rying out their " ideas " to the last consequence, overweight 
our strength, make our tenure impossible, and compel us to 
leave the Peninsula to the Mussulmans. If we keep it, we 
shall keep it by sweeping our brains clear of dreams, — by 
giving power to those only who know how to command, and 
returning to the plain principles which won the empire that 
we are now making the plaything of amateurs. 

"You English," said General Jacob, one of the ablest 
officers that the Indian service ever produced, " you English 
imagine that liberty means the same thing in all j)arts of 
the world, and that all mankind equally desire it. You 
could not make a greater mistake. Liberty with you means 
that you have a right to govern yourselves, and that it is 
tyranny to govern you. Liberty with an Asiatic means 
that he has a right to be governed, and that to make him 
govern himself is tyranny. If the people of India were 
your equals, you would not be here, — your mission is to 
govern them ; and you must govern them well, or they will 
cut your throats." 

Cartloads of sonorous dispatches from the India Office 
contain less wisdom than this single sentence, which is in- 
deed the summing up and epitome of our relations with our 
splendid dependency. For the present the Right Honora- 
ble gentlemen will have their way ; and when another ca- 
tastrophe comes, — as come it will, — we shall call in our 



398 England's War. 

Jacobs to recover us, and then begin again on the same 
road. 

StrijjjDcd of its verbiage, and the fine-sounding phrases by 
which its true intention is concealed from us, the real mean- 
ing of the cant about self-government is, that our modern 
administrators are partly conscious of their own inability to 
rule, and partly weary of the effort. They will not ac- 
knowledge their own weakness. The descendants of a once 
imperial race have accepted and taken to their hearts the 
economist's theory, that every man's first duty is to attend 
to his own affairs, — follow, in other words, his own pleas- 
ure. Philosophical platitudes are made an excuse for apa- 
thy. A few fine phrases in which no one really believes 
are admitted as if they were laws of nature, and we drift on 
under a self-made destiny through imbecility into anarchy 
and collapse. 

The same helplessness, disguised behind the same mask 
of pretending sagacity, discloses itself in the present Colo- 
nial policy. Twice already in this volume I have spoken 
of the so-called Colonial Question. If we return to it again, 
it is because the Colonies are infinitely more important to 
us than even India, — it is because the entire future of the 
English Empire depends on our wisely availing ourselves ot 
the opportunities which those dependencies offer to us. 
When we consider the increasing poi3ulousness of other 
nations, their imperial energy, and their vast jDolitical devel- 
opment ; when we contrast the enormous area of territory 
which belongs to Russia, to the United States, or to Ger- 
many, with the puny dimensions of our own island home, 
prejudice itself cannot hide from us that our place as a first- 
rate power is gone among such rivals unless we can iden- 
tify the Colonies with ourselves, and multiply the English 
soil by spreading the English race over them. Our fathers, 
looking down into coming times, proud of their country and 
jealous of its greatness, secured at the cannon's mouth the 
fairest portions of the earth's surface to the English flag. 



England's War, 399 

They bequeathed to us an inheritance so magnificent that 
imagination itself cannot measure the vastness of its capa- 
bilities. Let the Canadian Dominion, let Australia, the 
Cape, and New Zealand be occupied by subjects of the Brit- 
ish Crown — be consolidated by a common cord of patriot- 
ism, equal members all of them of a splendid empire and 
alike interested in its grandeur, and the fortunes of England 
may still be in their infancy, and a second era of glory and 
power be dawning upon us, to which our past history may 
be but the faint and insignificant prelude. The yet unex- 
hausted vigor of our people, with boundless room in which 
to expand, will reproduce the old English character and the 
old Eno;lish streno^th over an area of a hundred Britains. 
The United States of America themselves do not possess a 
more brilliant pros^DCCt. 

It is no less certain that if we cannot rise to the height 
of the occasion, the days of our greatness are numbered. 
We must decline in relative strength, decline in purpose 
and aim, and in the moral temperament which only the con- 
sciousness of a high national mission confers. 

And yet, notoriously, the permanence of our union with 
the Colonies is regarded with indifference by our leading 
politicians. They refuse, all of them, to look beyond the 
exigencies of the present moment. They are contented to 
leave the next generation to solve their own problems, and 
sink or swim as their skill or luck may order, provided 
only they can themselves maintain their own supremacy 
from year to year by humoring the so-called interests of 
the capitalists and manufacturers. The conditions of the 
situation are so plain that the most willful perversity can- 
not refuse to see them, yet there is no longer statesmanship 
or courage among us to encounter and frown down the 
hostility of paltry selfishness. The men of money are 
afraid that a closer connection with the Colonies will 
affect the labor market and raise wages. The economist, 
whose farthest horizon of vision is the next budget, sees 



400 England's War, 

that the Colonies cost us at j)resent a few hundred thou- 
sands of pounds annually, and without caring to think what 
they bring in, cries out that they are a burden on the tax- 
payers. The working classes have fastened their imagina- 
tion on the division of the land at home, and regard an in- 
vitation to remove elsewhere as a snare to lead oif their 
attention. The land-owner, contemptuously indifferent to 
the danger, sees that the thicker England is peopled the 
more his estates increase in value ; and thus the interests 
of the empire are for the present thrust aside. 

The working man will wake from his dream. He will 
discover at last that a hundred acres in Canada would be 
better for him than five at home, even if he could succeed 
in obtaining them. Nor will he be contented to swelter on 
upon intermittent wages, in the poisoned atmosphere of our 
huoe and hideous towns. Hard times will come ajiain. 
The best and manliest of our artisans will turn their backs 
upon us as the Irish have done, and the question will then 
be whether we shall have soil left to offer them over which 
our flag is flying, or whether they will not rather be casting 
in their lot with young and vigorous nations whom we shall 
have forced away, from the unworthiest of motives, into an 
independence which they did not desire. 

The administration of the Colonies has fallen very unfor- 
tunately into the hands of the aristocracy — of the class of 
persons most unfitted by association and temperament to 
deal with them successfully. The colonists are men seek- 
ing their own fortunes, proud, self-dependent, and unaffected 
by the traditional reverence for rank by which the greatest 
levellers among us are irresistibly influenced at home. 
They are jealous of their liberties, conscious of their grow- 
ing strength, in want of nothing which could induce them 
to meet these high persons on terms of compromise. While 
they would bear it, the Colonies were used as sewers to 
drain off our refuse population ; when they declined to re- 
ceive our burglars and paupers, they still gave opportunities 



England's War. 401 

of patronage. Cadets of noble families, or men who had 
laid their " party " under obligations, were quartered on the 
colonial revenues, or received grants from colonial lands. 
When this resource dried up also, the Minister for the Col- 
onies became tired of his thankless office. Unable to rise 
to an imperial conception of their duties, the noble lords 
saw no reason for extending to the colonists a share in the 
honors and prerogatives of the mother country. If they 
were incorporated in the empire, the democratic element 
would receive an increase dangerous to their own privi- 
leges ; and thus the economist's theory was accepted as a 
welcome expedient. The Colonies were to be left to them- 
selves to bear their own expenses, and, if they pleased, to 
assert their independence. No anxiety was felt for a con- 
nection which was no longer to be utilized to provide for 
friends and dependants. 

That separation is or has been the drift of the colo- 
nial policy of the present ministers there is no occasion to 
argue. The universal impression which they have created 
throughout the empire outweighs their own feebly uttered 
and stammering denials. Had they been sincere in these 
denials, they would have made haste to clear themselves of 
suspicion by an unequivocal declaration of their real pur- 
pose ; and we take leave to say that a jDolicy tending to 
produce consequences so momentous ought not to have 
been introduced by a side wind. Lord Granville and Mr. 
Gladstone were no doubt confident that the course which 
they were pursuing was a wise one, but they ought to have 
remembered that these separatist opinions are of recent 
growth, lately adopted even by themselves, and diametri- 
cally contrary to the views held by the men who were the 
founders and builders-up of England's political greatness. 
A false step taken in such a matter cannot be recalled ; our 
Colonies once gone are gone forever ; and therefore, before 
they acted even in the slightest degree on the new conclu- 
sions at which they had arrived, they were bound to consult 
26 



402 ^ EnglancCs War. 

the country without evasion or reservation. The disinte- 
gration of an empire, the reduction of Britain to the ancient 
limits of her own island shores, is at least a matter of as 
much consequence as a Reform Bill, or the dissolution of 
the Irish Church. The people have not been treated fairly. 
They have been told that there is no question of separation 
at all ; that a better mode of management has merely been 
substituted for a worse ; that the Colonies are wealthy 
enough to bear their own expenses ; and, as they choose to 
lay duties on English goods, the English taxpayer is not to 
be expected to contribute to their defense. This is not an 
honest statement, either of the case in itself, or of the pur- 
pose of our late colonial jDolicy. Whatever ministers may 
think now, it is certain that they did contemplate, and did 
most ardently desire, that at least Canada should declare 
herself independent. Young communities have heavy ex- 
j^enses thrown upon them in making roads and railroads 
and canals to open up their countries for us as well as for 
themselves. They cannot raise a revenue except by cus- 
toms duties ; and, as they direct their whole trade to the 
mother country, they no doubt cannot help laying taxes 
upon English produce. But, in projjortion to their num- 
bers, the colonists are the largest consumers of our manu- 
factures in the world. Successful settlers come home to 
reside in England, bringing a stream of wealth with them 
broader and deeper far than the trifling sum which Eng- 
land has been called on to spend. The outlay of the 
mother country on the least advanced of her Colonies is but 
like the sinking capital upon an estate in drains and fences. 
Canada and Australia, which have long ceased to cost us 
anything, fifty years hence — or twenty years hence — will 
be helping to bear the burden of the niaintenance of the 
empire, if they are permitted to continue a part of it. 

Busy about their own concerns, the English people are 
at present indifferent. They take their statesmen at their 
word, and refuse to believe that they mean miscliief. Let 



England's War, 403 

tlie ripe fruit fall, let a single colony " cut the painter," and, 
if I know anything of the temper of my countrymen, a 
storm will rise from which those who have provoked the 
catastrophe may well call on the mountains to cover them. 

We look to the Colonies as the immediate refuge for 
millions of our countrymen, as offering at once a complete 
and the only solution for our social difficulties, and as giv- 
ing us an opportunity of recovering the esteem of the world, 
which we are so uneasy under the conception of having lost. 
We believe that our power is desijised ; and, though we 
hate war, we almost bring ourselves to wish for it that we 
may redeem our reputation. It is well that we should be 
prepared for all possibilities. We spend fifteen millions a 
year on our army, and we have a right to insist that some 
sort of an army shall be forthcoming. If other nations in- 
terfere with us while we are about our legitimate business, 
we must so bear ourselves in the quarrel that they shall be- 
ware of meddling with us for the future. But if we wish to 
win back their respect by making war ourselves, there is a 
campaign which we might open like no other — a campaign 
against administrative incapacity, against swindling and 
cheating, against drunkenness and uncleanness, against 
hunger and squalor and misery ; against the inhuman vices 
which are bred as in a hotbed in our gigantic cities, against 
the universal root of the disorders which are preying upon 
us, the all-pervading, all-devouring love of money. We de- 
sire wealth and honor and long life. Be it so. There are 
conditions on which " all these things shall be added to us." 
If we refuse the conditions,'and desire these things for them- 
selves, we shall find ignominy for honor, for long life all- 
pervading misery, and along with the riches a curse which 
shall render them forever unprofitable to us. The business 
of government, truly enough, is to watch over the nation's 
" wealth ; " but not wealth in the modern meaning, which in 
itself betrays how far we have travelled on the down-hill 
road; rather the well-being, the bodily and moral healtli of 



404 England's War, 

the people of which the nation is composed. Admit this 
(not in words ; every politician, from Mr. Gladstone down- 
wards, will repeat it in words as glibly as a school-girl re- 
peats her catechism), accept it as the first principle of action, 
and the plagnes which are consuming ns will melt away of 
themselves. It will no longer be found impossible to make 
war on drunkenness for fear of offending the brewing inter- 
est, or swindling for fear of diminishing the profits of trade. 
We shall hear no more of impossibilities, for in the pursuit 
of a noble object nothing is impossible. We shall cease to 
watch our export and import list with a feverish anxiety, or 
exult over an increase of population as increasing our means 
of multiplying cheap manufactures. We shall rather labor 
to prevent this enormous festering crowd from growing 
upon our hands. We shall seek to provide for further ad- 
ditions to our numbers in countries where a happier and 
purer life may be possible for them. 

Political economy, we are told, forbids it. When the 
Irish landlords woke, under the teaching of the famine, to 
a consciousness that they had allowed Ireland to become 
overpeopled, political economy did not forbid them to give 
free passages to America to hundreds of thousands of starv- 
ing poor. .W©^ too, in mere greed of gain, have permitted 
England to become overpeojDled : is it an injustice to ask 
that out of the huge piles of money which cheap labor has 
heaped up for us, a small fraction shall be taken to save the 
fixmilies of those who have toiled for us from being swamped 
in wretchedness ? Mr. Fawcett exclaims that if we open an 
easy road to the Colonies our best workmen will leave us. 
Let us hope, rather, that by relieving the ever-growing 
pressure we may make England more endurable to them. 
But if it be so, why should we wish tiiem to stay ? Let the 
Colonies remain attached to us, and wherever our people 
thrive best they will conduce most to the strength of the 
empire, of which they will continue as much sul)jects as 
before. If our manufacturino; towns were shrunk to half 



England's War. 405 

their present size, if the floating tide of humanity which 
surges and eddies round the London suburbs were all gone, 
if the millions of English and Scotch men and women who 
are wasting their constitutions and wearing out their souls 
in factories and coal mines were growing corn and rearing 
cattle in Canada and New Zealand, the red color would 
come back to their cheeks, their shrunken sinews would fill 
out again, their children, now a drag u]3on their hands, 
would be elements of wealth and strength, while here at 
home the sun would shine again, and wages would rise to 
the colonial level, and land would divide of itself, and we 
should have room to move and breathe. The manufacturers 
would reap lighter profits ; the land-owners would find their 
incomes shrink to the level which satisfied their grandfa- 
thers ; the evil sisters, luxury and poverty, would move off 
hand in hand; but the health and worth of the English 
nation would be increased a million fold. 

I speak of what cannot be — cannot be at least till in 
many a long year of painful discipline we have unlearnt 
the most cherished lessons of modern politics. One thing, 
however, is possible, and ought immediately to be done. 
The Colonies will nor take our pauj^ers ; and as we make 
our beds, we must lie in them ; but we can prevent pau- 
perism from growing heavier upon our hands. If we 
send out able-bodied men with their ftimilies to settle upon 
land, we must support them also till their first crops are 
grown. If we advance money for other people's benefit, 
we expect to be repaid, and cannot see our way to obtain- 
ing security for it. But there is not the same difficulty in 
providing for the young. When Mr. Forster's Education 
Bill is fairly in work, in one shape and another we shall 
have more than a million boys and girls at school in these 
islands, of whom at least a fourth will be adrift when their 
teaching is over, with no definite outlook. Let the State 
for once resume its old character, and constitute itself the 
constable of these helpless ones. When the grammatical 



406 England's War, 



1 



part of their teaching is over, let them have a year or two 
of industrial instruction, and under an understanding .with 
the colonial authorities let them be drafted off where their 
services are most in demand. The settlers would be de- 
lighted to receive and clothe and feed them on the condi- 
tions of the old apprenticeship. If the apj^rentice system 
is out of favor, some other system can be easily invented. 
Welcome in some shape they are certain to be. A con- 
tinued stream of young, well-taught, unspoilt English na- 
tures would be the most precious gift which the Colonies 
could receive from us. 

If the Colonial Office has no answer but the old " impos- 
sible," a word which sounds in our ears like the despairing 
wash of the waters of Lethe, then, in the name of common 
sense and humanity, let the Colonial Office be dissolved. 
Let the noble lord or the honorable gentleman for whom 
it is necessary to find a seat in the Cabinet be provided 
with some titular position to which that honor may be 
technically attached. Let us have ministers in partibus, 
with no department to paralyze or mismanage. And for 
the administration of the Colonies, and the readjustment 
of England's relation with them, let there be some Coun- 
cil established where the Colonies as well as the mother 
country shall be represented, in whose eyes the interests 
of the empire will be of more consequence than the 
supremacy of party. 

It is not our supposed unreadiness to fight which has 
lowered, and is still lowering, England's reputation. We 
have not allowed any occasion to pass by when our honor 
or our interest distinctly called us to arms — we are diseg- 
teemed because, as a nation, we no longer seem to live for 
any high and honorable purpose. Communities as well 
as private persons always set before themselves consciously 
or unconsciously some supreme aim towards which their 
energies are bent. Military power, extension of territory, 
political unity, dynastic aggrandizement, or the main- 



England's War. ' 407 

tenauce of some particular religious creed, have been at 
various times the all-absorbing objects on which the minds 
of great nations have been bent ; and as none of these has 
been entirely good, so none has been entirely discreditable. 
The noblest object, which all honor and few pursue, is the 
well-being of the people ; the worst and meanest is that to 
which we in England are supposed to have devoted our- 
selves — the mere aggregation of enormous heaps of 
money, wliile we are careless what becomes of the " hands," 
as we call them, by which all the money is created. 

We have a vast empire — we have infinite land waiting 
only to be occupied — we have a population larger than we 
can employ, even on our own theory of the manner in which 
we would wish to employ them, crowded into lanes and 
alleys and cellars, seething in drunkenness and pollution ; 
of the children born in these places the fate of those that 
die being more blessed a thousand fold than of those who 
survive. We have or we had a teeming Ireland, from 
which millions had to be removed to escape starvation ; 
we let the Irish go to the United States, careless of con- 
sequences so long as the immediate value of the landlord's 
property was not affected. We deliberately refuse to carry 
the overflow of our own people to lands which are crying 
out to be tilled, where they can live in health and abun- 
dance, and where the death of a child, instead of a relief, 
is a material loss. We will not lift a finger to save our 
voluntary emigrants to our own Crown, or those who re- 
main from the drink-shops, or our national good name 
from the reproach of commercial dishonesty. We profess 
a righteous horror of slavery ; but the English farm la- 
borer who has been rash enough to marry is as much a 
slave under the lash of hunger as the negro under the 
whip, and is so much more unhappy than the slave that he 
has no refiige but the workhouse in sickness and old age. 
He is told, in insolent irony, that he is a free man, and 
may go where he pleases. Rather, he may go away if he 



408 England's War. 

can ; and those who mock him with the name of freedom, 
know well that he lies in an enchanted circle of necessity 
— that he must stay jDassive under the barest wages which 
will keep life in him and his, under penalty of starvation if 
he resist or make an effort to escape. 

This it is which has lowered English credit — that we 
have grown oblivious of all generous principles, that pa- 
triotism has become a jest, and that nothing is consid- 
ered worthy of a serious man's attention but what will 
put money in his purse. Words travel far in these days of 
newspapers. "When a great capitalist said of emigration 
during the late stagnation of trade, when millions were 
starving, " Keep our men at home — we shall want them 
when trade revives," the world heard of it, and made its 
comments. English working men, it seems, exist only .to 
fill rich men's pockets. The House of Commons cheered 
a well-known speaker when, as a crowning argument 
against assistance to emigrate being granted by the State, 
he argued that it would displease the Americans. An 
English politician declares that he is afraid of helj^ing men 
and women in search of employment from one part of the 
Queen's dominions to another for fear a foreign power 
might not like it. Parliament approves, and we are sur- 
prised that we are no longer respected. Wonderful con- 
sideration for American sensitiveness ! — wonderful new- 
born consideration, of a kind however which they are so 
little inclined to appreciate ! Let us take courage. Were 
we suddenly to show ourselves practically alive to the con- 
dition of our people, and set apart for the sake of them 
some small portion of our enormous income, the Americans 
would forgive us as soon as they had recovered from their 
astonishment, even if it took the form of sending families to 
Canada. 

" You will increase taxation," shriek the economists. 
" Money must be taken from those who have it, and laid out 
upon those who have not." Be it so. We lay on taxes 



England's War. 409 

without scruple for a war, and it is a war which we are ad- 
vocating. When the interests of the nation require killing 
and burning and destroying, we are all called on to contrib- 
ute, and are ridiculed if we complain. In the same interests 
of the nations we may tax ourselves for a war on misery and 
vice and over-population. Is it not as honorable to save 
life as to destroy, — to rescue millions from wretchedness as 
to plunge millions into mourning and woe ? 



THE EASTERN QUESTION.^ 

MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS ON THE RUSSIAN WAE. 
London. 1854-1855. 



Sir Hamilton Seymour is a great diplomatist. When 
we read in the Bhie Books the account of his conversations 
with the Emperor Nicholas, we congratulated ourselves on 
the dexterous statesman who defended so ably the cause of 
England and of justice. A monstrous Ahab was coveting 
the vineyard of another Naboth, and here was a man and 
an Englishman who could see through his wicked designs, 
and expose and baffle them. As if in these late days of 
light and civilization the appropriation of a neighbor's terri- 
tory by an encroaching j)ower, was an unheard enormity, 
the country rang with outcries of robbery. Colored maps 
filled the shop windows, showing the provinces which dur- 
ing the last century had been torn from Turkey by the 
Czars : and in an enthusiasm for the cause of right we 
painted the conflict to ourselves as a war between civiliza- 
tion and barbarism. The armies of Russia were a second 
swarm of Vandals and Goths, menacing Europe with a re- 
turn to mediaeval darkness, and Constantinople was to be 
the first sacrificed. 

There is a story of an Irishman on his trial for felony 

1 The revival of the Eastern Question tempts me to republish this paper, 
which was written fifteen years ago. The changes which iiave taken place 
in Europe in consequence of the Crimean War have enormously altered the 
relative positions of the Great Powers. France, Avhich was then all but 
omnipotent, lies for the present under an eclipse. I see nothing however, 
in those changes which leads me to doubt the general soundness of the prin- 
ciples which the essay advocates, and I leave it as it first appeared. 



The Eastern Question. 411 

who brought witnesses to speak for his character. They 
bore their testimony but too effectively, — the catalogue of 
the novel virtues which were attributed to him so perplexed 
his imagination that he cried out in court, " My lord, if I 
had but known what I was, I would not have done it!" 
Something of this sort the Turks must have felt when they 
found themselves treated by the press of Europe as holding 
the advanced post of civilization, and lauded in cabinets as 
the representatives of progress. " No nation in the world," 
said Lord Palmerston, in the House of Commons, " had in 
the last twenty years made so great advances." True, that 
the bestiality of social life in Constantinople could be paral- 
leled only m the worst days of Imperial Rome, — true, that 
alone in that one spot in Europe the slave-market was open, 
— true, that the Turkish Pashas filled their seraglios with 
the daughters voluntarily offered by those other champions 
of freedom, the Circassian chiefs, and that the trade was 
only checked by Russian cruisers, — true, that Asiatic Tur- 
key was a wilderness swarming with brigands, that life and 
property were for the most part insecure a mile beyond the 
walls of a town, that the administration of justice was iniq- 
uity, that if there was honesty anywhere it was among the 
poor, and that rank and villainy ascended in a corresponding 
ratio'. No matter ! It was for the interest of Europe that 
the Turks should keep the keys of the Dardanelles. It was 
for the interest of decency that they should seem to deserve 
their position. Ministers therefore imagined excellences for 
them to supply the lacking reality ; the sympathies of the 
nation were roused easily for a weak people struggling un- 
equally for their liberties, and England threw itself into the 
quarrel with an enthusiasm for justice and right almost re- 
minding imaginative persons of the days of the early Chris- 
tians, " who were all of one heart and one mind." 

When the unanimity was analyzed, elements were found 
indeed in the composition not exceedingly homogeneous. 
The Republicans expected that at the first cannon-shot the 



412 Tlie Eastern Question, 

spirit of 1848 would revive. Moderate Liberals still re- 
sented the oppression of Poland. Nicholas had assisted the 
Austrians to crush Hungary, and those who desired revolu- 
tion in Germany and Italy, and those who saw in a consti- 
tutional system like our own the only permanent bulwark 
against revolution, looked all to St. Petersburg as the strong- 
hold of despotism, from which Berlin and Vienna, and the 
petty princes of the smaller states alike derived their inspi- 
ration. Kossuth had appealed to England in behalf of the 
" nationalities," and had failed ; but the great body of the 
middle classes, who would not countenance insurrection, 
which threatened to become a war against property, were 
pleased with an opportunity of showing that they would 
strike for liberty in an orthodox manner ; they believed that 
if Russia was seriously weakened, the despotic sovereigns 
would be compelled to modify their governments. So far 
the interest was rather political than diplomatic. Formerly 
we were the champions of Turkey ; but in reality we were 
fighting for European freedom. 

But, again, there were the statesmen to whom a Russian 
occupation of Constantinoi3le was the hereditary bugbear. 
As the restorer of order, as the vindicator of legitimate gov- 
ernment against revolution, Russia would be tolerated and 
applauded ; but in possession of the Dardanelles, Russia 
would command the Mediterranean ; in possession of Tur- 
key she would stretch her swelling influence to the Indus. 
The balance of power would be compromised ; our Eastern 
Empire would be rendered insecure. 

Finally, there were the jDoets and philosophers who were 
weary of peace, who believed that the ancient English vir- 
tues were stagnating, who saw in war (so that it was just, 
or could be imagined to be just) a grand instrument of 
moral regeneration, an electric power which would turn 
" the snub-nosed rogue " behind the counter into a hero, 
and " his cheating yard-wand " into a champion's sword. 
These were the feelings which were working in England 



The Eastern Question. 413 

beyond the irritation which was provoked by the immediate 
mission of Prince MenschikofF, and the passage of the Prutli, 
vague all of them, and irreconcilable, — able for the mo- 
ment to rouse the nation to enormous effort ; yet containing 
in their very indefiniteness the seeds of their own ultimate 
disappointment. Every one was looking to uncertain possi- 
bilities. We knew as little what was really attainable as 
what we really desired. Finland was to be restored to 
Sweden, the shores of the Euxine to the Turks. When 
Russia was driven back from the seaboard, when her for- 
tresses were in ruins, and her fleets destroyed, then only our 
condescending liberal politicians would consent that she 
might be spared from annihilation. 

Perhaps the educated statesmen only saw their way with 
clearness, as they only in any sense can be said to have 
gained their object. To them the hope of the multitude 
was the principal alarm, and driven into this war reluct- 
antly, they were resolved at least so to manage it that the 
spirit of revolution should be held from breaking out. Lib- 
erty in a vague sense was a convenient watchword, but lib- 
erty in the concrete was anarchy and socialism. In a war 
of freedom Hungary would have been the ally whom we 
should have naturally sought, and Austria would have been 
our natural enemy; the theatre of the campaign would have 
been Poland, where Russia could be wounded to the quick. 
But freedom was the one especial thing which was not to be 
fought for, and therefore Hungary was ignored except as a 
province of the Court of Vienna. Austria was courted for 
an ally with a passion which the most manifest double deal- 
ing failed to repress. The war was carried to the Crimea, 
which, if we conquered, we could not continue ourselves to 
hold, which the Tartar population could not defend, and 
which equally we could not restoi^e to tlie Sultan. In the 
obscurity of the objects at which we were aiming, the sol- 
diers before Sebastopol wrote that no one seemed to know 
for what or for whom we were contending, trusting only 



414 The Eastern Question. 

that it was not for the Turks ; while to the rest^of the world 
we presented the extraordinary phenomenon of a free peo- 
ple in alliance with two despots, and fighting for a third in 
the supposed cause of liberty. These anomalies at the out- 
set were invisible in the enthusiastic hopes in which we 
were indulging ; while the struggle proceeded we were 
absorbed in the excitement of its details. But now, as we 
look back from the second year of peace, we are able more 
calmly to examine our gains and losses, and see how far our 
dreams are realized ; how far the better interests of the 
world have received substantial advantage. 

Before entering on the calculation, however, let it be at 
once allowed that the war, after the form which the Turkish 
question assumed in the mission of Prince Menschikoff, had 
become unavoidable. Although in England there was but 
little sympathy with the ultra-revolutionists on the Conti- 
nent, the violent reaction of 1849 created a lively disappoint- 
ment. When the confusion subsided we had expected that 
the foreign governments would have settled down into some 
mild kind of liberalism. In the place of it we saw the few 
constitutions which had been painfully labored together pin- 
ioned on the points of bayonets. The close of the convul- 
sions in Hungary formed an especial claim upon us ; the 
Hungarians having been crushed not in any attempt at es- 
tablishing novel schemes of government, but in defense of 
their own hereditary laws. By their gallantry the Mag- 
yars had won their cause against heavy odds, and in the 
crisis of the victory Russia had stepped in with overwhelm- 
ing force, and had given them over, bound hand and foot, to 
Austrian revenge. Nort contented with the success of this 
injustice, the Courts of St. Petersburg and Vienna demanded 
the surrender of the patriot leaders who had taken refuge 
at Constantinople ; and the Sultan (it was the one honest 
act of his reign) earned our respect by daring their anger, 
and refusing. On the first hint of the employment of force 
against him, the English fleet had been ordered to the Dar- 



The Eastern Question. 415 

danelles in his siipi^ort, and had the Northern Powers per- 
severed, the war would have broken out five years sooner, 
as different in form from that out of which we have now 
emerged, as unquestionably it would have been different in 
its results. The crisis passed away, but the feeling which 
had been excited remained, and on a fresh spirit of aggres- 
sion being manifested by Nicholas, the regard which Abdul 
Medjid had earned by his courage, coupled with a vague 
dread of Russian preponderance, roused a temper both in 
France and England which Louis Napoleon's government 
could not have ventured to defy, and which no living Eng- 
lish statesman would have been allowed to resist. We 
might have bowed to the judgment of a Peel or a Welling- 
ton, — Aberdeen and Gladstone, Cobden and Lord John 
Russell only shattered their reputations in a useless ©impo- 
sition. 

We accept the war, therefore, as our own work ; nor in 
general need we quarrel with the conduct of it. Quite 
possibly it was directed to the objects which were alone 
obtainable ; or, if obtainable, were alone to be Hesired. 
Quite possibly, if we had gone to work in the style which 
would have pleased Kossuth and Mazzini, we should have 
let loose a spirit of mere anarchy and desolation. When 
the circumstances had once arrived at the position which 
we allowed them to assume, we can allow that the whole 
business was managed reasonably well ; we fought because 
we could not avoid fighting ; we made peace at the earliest 
moment at which a tolerable peace could be exacted. 

Letting the facts, therefore, pass so far as open to no 
just question, we may sum up the results without blaming 
either ourselves or others if those results shall not appear 
as much to our advantage as we might desire. And first, 
it is quite clear that nothing has been gained for the 
nationalities or for European liberty. Russia may be 
weakened, but Austria is stronger than ever, and the petty 
despots who rest upon her. The Germans believed that 



416 The Eastern Question. 

if the Northern Autocrat could be crippled, the Dukes and 
Princes would restore the constitutions — but their hopes 
deceived them : while Lombardy still languishes in chains 
— still looks to the poniard as the only possible deliv- 
erance.-^ Nor again can the enthusiasts be altogether 
satisfied who prophesied to themselves a mighty moral 
regeneration of England from the revival of war. On the 
one hand the Browns and the Camerons, the Pauls and the 
Strahans, have shown no symptoms of repentance. Bank- 
ing accounts continue to be cooked ; chicory has not dis- 
appeared out of our coffee, nor devil's-dust out of our 
calicoes. The independent electors as little looked for 
heroes to represent them in April 1857, as in July 1852. 
That which was crooked is crooked still ; and that which 
was righteous is righteous still. We saw, also, that the 
expected regeneration was not so universally needed. The 
heart of the country rung sound at the first stroke. The 
young loungers of the barracks and the ball-room endured 
the first winter in the Crimea with the same courageous 
simplicity which their fathers showed in the Peninsula. 
The young Indian officers, who have been accused of caring 
only for their cigar and their billiard cues, are showing a 
quiet gallantry in this present dreadful mutiny which 
makes our ears tingle with admiration. But as they are 
acting now they would have acted ten years ago — the sup- 
posed degeneracy was but skin deep. Enthusiasm, now as 
ever, has been mistaken alike in its understanding of the 
present and its expectations of the future. 

When we turn from dreams to reality, we are on sounder 
ground. It may be admitted that when the English Gov- 
ernment declined to enter upon any secret understanding 
with respect to Turkey, the Emperor Nicholas intended to 
take the matter into his own hands. To Sir Hamilton 

1 Indirectly the liberation of Italy, the overthrow of the temporal power 
of the Pope, and the reconstitution of the German Empire, are results of the 
Crimean War; but it is none the less certain that in England these conse- 
quences were unforeseen, and at the time were undesired. 



The Eastern Question. 417 

Seymour he disclaimed an intention of a permanent occu- 
pation of Constantinople ; but no doubt he was resolved to 
interfere more and more in the administration of the 
Turkish Empire — to convert the Sultan into a helpless 
dependant, preparatory to ultimate absorption. He was 
foiled by a coalition which he believed impossible, and 
himself having been killed by anxiety and disappointment, 
his successor has been compelled to accept a peace which 
drives him back from the Danube. The military resources, 
which it had cost the labor of generations to accumulate, 
are for the present crippled, and any attempt at a renewal 
of the same game has been rendered impossible, perhaps 
for another quarter of a century. Great nations rally 
rapidly indeed from military exhaustion. Little more than 
forty years ago France was a chained captive at the feet 
of Europe ; her capital twice occupied by invading armies ; 
her last recruits drawn in vain from her exhausted prov- 
inces — powerless, prostrate, and crushed. In 1857 she 
is again the leading power of the world. We must not 
expect too much from the weakness to which we have re- 
duced Russia. Nevertheless, we may feel sanguine that 
she has received a check which for the present will be 
effective. On the j^rinciiDles on which the balance of power 
is now maintained, we have achieved a real victory, with 
which we have a right to be satisfied. We must not ex- 
aggerate or expect to maintain all that we have gained. 
Sebastopol is in ruins, and Russia is bound by treaty not 
to rebuild the fortifications, or to reestablish the Euxine 
fleet. For a certain number of years these stipulations 
will be observed : but from the nature of the case they are, 
and must be, temporary. Again and again restrictions of 
this kind have been imposed by the European nations on 
each other ; but an unvarying experience shows that in the 
long run powerful governments cannot be coerced in their 
own dominions, as to the number of cannon which they will 
mount upon their walls, or the number of ships which they 
27 



418 The Easte7m Question. 

will maintain in their harbors. Circumstances change ; 
new dangers rise ; new coalitions are formed ; and, on the 
watch as they always must b*^ "fcr an escape from condi- 
tions galling to their pride, they cannot long be at a loss 
for an opportunity. Sebastopol, we may assure ourselves, 
will again resume its armor ; its docks will again be 
cleared ; again a fleet will float upon its waters, and when 
the steppes are crossed by railroads, and when in a few 
days, without exhaustion, the armies of the empire can 
be poured into the Crimea, the hazardous experiment of 
1854 will scarcely be repeated. Nevertheless, we have 
gained something. The settlement at the Conferences of 
Paris will not be disturbed while the present order of 
Europe remains. How long that order will remain is 
another question. The revolutions of 1848 showed by 
how frail a tenure it is held ; and while on this side of the 
question the uncertainty is so considerable, collateral con- 
siderations are, perhaps, of greater importance than the 
immediate conditions of the Peace. England, in its rela- 
tions with Russia, must look not to Constantinople only, or 
the provinces of the Danube, but to Ispahan, to Cabul, to 
Pekin, perhaps to the banks of the Indus, perhaj^s to the 
English Channel. Let us see, therefore, how, in these 
other respects, we stand towards her, and how far her^ 
enmity, which we have preferred to her friendship, is likely 
to be of moment to us. 

The Russians, though our rivals in the East, had in Eu- 
rope, till the outbreak of the war, been our surest allies. 
At the coup d'etat in Paris, it was expected that Louis Na- 
poleon might turn against us : an attack upon England is a 
card of popularity which any French Government may well 
be temjDted to play. Waterloo is not forgotten by the 
French army; even now, in this last week, when "the 
medal of St. Helena " has been distributed among the sur- 
viving soldiers of the imperial campaigns, we may see an 
evidence that the uncle's exile is not forgotten by the 



The Eastern Question. 419 

nephew. But Louis Napoleon knew, and we knew, that 
the first stroke which was aimed at England would be the 
signal for the revival of the Holy Alliance, and the odds 
would be too heavy to contend against. Louis Napoleon 
has, perhaps, learnt that peace with us is more profitable 
than the paltry glory which might be gained in attempts to 
avenge Waterloo ; but neither he, nor any government by 
whom he may be superseded or followed, need now enter- 
tain the same alarms ; we shall fight our battle with France 
single-handed, if we have to fight it at all. And again, the 
French may have no thought of striking us ; but if they do, 
we have the satisfaction of knowing that we have surren- 
dered the friendship of a. government which alone in Eu- 
rope (if we except our own) is in no danger of an overthrow ; 
while the alliance which we retain with a nation notoriously 
capricious, — with a ruler whose tenure of power may per- 
ish as it rose, and whose policy, at best, will hardly survive 
his life, did not require any such sacrifice. When the war 
broke out we flattered ourselves with a prospect of insur- 
rections of oppressed serfs, of legions deserting, and prov- 
inces rising in revolt ; the house of RomanoflP stood firm 
through a trial of unexampled severity ; Pole and Musco- 
vite united in a rivalry of loyalty ; the Georgian levies were 
among the most faithful of the soldiers of Mouraviefi: 
Whether it was from superstition or from cowardice, — 
whether from national pride or gratitude towards a govern- 
ment which is substantially sound and just, at all events, we 
have received a proof that the rulers of Russia need fear 
nothing from the disloyalty of their subjects, or the dissatis- 
faction of the most remote countries which they have re- 
duced to obedience. As much as this will scarcely be said 
for the position of our present ally ; and in courting the 
friendship of Louis Napoleon, we have but partially acquired 
the friendship of France. Engaged as we have been in a 
good cause, we need not perhaps much concern ourselves 
with such considerations; yet we have learnt many other 



420 The Uastern Question. 

things with respect to the Russians which have corrected 
extravagant impressions, and have taught us, however inev- 
itable their conduct had made the change, to regret the terms 
in which we have placed ourselves towards her. Notwith- 
standing the result of the siege of Sebastopol, they have not 
suffered in military prestige. We anticipated at the outset 
far easier work than we found. It was thouo'ht a lio-ht 
thing when our fleets first sailed to lay Cronstadt in ashes, 
and pound to atoms the plaster defenses of the great arsenal 
of the Euxine. The whole power of England and France, 
supported passively by Austria, and actively by Sardinia 
and Turkey, succeeded, with their communications secure 
and rapid, with every advantage for 2:)rocuriiig supjDlies, in 
partially conquering a single stronghold. It was a great 
victory, but it was achieved at a cost to England alone of 
eighty millions of money, and perhaps fifty thousand lives. 
If any admirer of Russia had foretold beforehand that she 
would be capable of a defense so desperate, we should have 
laughed to scorn so extravagant a prophecy. She has shown 
that on her own ground, even at its extremity, where she is 
at greatest disadvantage, she has a power of resistance which 
the strongest nations must respect ; while MouraviefF's army 
in Georgia, supported (notwithstanding that the communi- 
cation through the Black Sea was cut off) in so high a de- 
gree of efficiency, was a j^roof of the immense effiarts of 
which she was capable. The world has seen that she is 
weaker than France, England, and Austria united ; but 
neither East nor West expected to find her otherwise. In- 
disputably, we have learnt to form a better measure of Rus- 
• sia's strength. At the same time, we have been forced to 
modify materially our Conceptions of Russian barbarism. 
When the Tiger was wrecked at Odessa, her crew, it was 
thought, would be sent to the mines of Siberia, or would be 
sold as slaves. Lieutenant Royer found himself treated 
rather as a guest than as a conquered enemy ; and the Eng- 
lish prisoners have given but one account of the courtesy 



The Eastern Question. 421 

with which they were entertained. The officers who, in 
the Crimea or elsewliere, came in jDersonal contact with 
Russians, never speak of tliem except with regard as gentle- 
men, and with resjject as soldiers. 

We have learnt something of our enemies : we have 
learnt something, also, of our friends. The cause of Turkey 
against Russia will hardly again be described as the cause of 
civilization against barbarism ; and the progress of which 
we heard was a progress of rottenness. We went to war 
for the independence of Turkey. A free sovereign, we 
said, was not to be dictated to in his own dominions, nor 
Turkish maoistrates to take orders from foreisjners. But 
with all our eloquence we could not alter the facts. The 
Emperor Nicholas was right : the sick man was truly sick, 
helpless, incapable. The independent sovereign exists only 
by the will and for the convenience of the other powers : he 
has now five masters instead of one, and is at this moment 
five times more a slave, — five times more under the do- 
minion of foreign dictation than he would have been if he 
had submitted to the exactions of MenschikofF. God for- 
bid that it should be otherwise ! It is the only chance to 
save him from instant dissolution ; but the power of such 
support is possible only up to a certain stage of corruption. 
The end will come, and come speedily ; and it is high time 
for us to consider seriously the very questions which Nicho- 
las proposed, and come without delay to an understanding 
on the steps which are to be pursued when the catastrophe 
is upon us. 

We cannot see as yet what those steps will be ; but there 
are already no obscure indications of the direction which 
they will follow. The influence of England at Constanti- 
nople is less than it was before the war ; the influence of 
France is immeasurably greater. The French threw us 
into shadow at Sebastopol ; and the failure at Kars, glorious 
as it was, yet was still a failure, and the discredit of it rests 
on English arms. 



422 The Eastern Question. 

To us, at least, neither the war nor its consequences will 
have brought any benefit adequate to our sacrifice. It 
would be well if it had brought us nothing to the contrary. 
Others, however, will carry off the prize ; we have to pay 
the cost, and bear the burden. The Persian war was a di- 
rect result of the rupture with Russia ; and if it be true that, 
in consequence of the Bengal rebellion, Herat, after all, is 
not to be surrendered, who can tell into what expense and 
difficulty this may again plunge us. Commissioner Yeh 
doubtless was not set on to insult us by agents from St. Pe- 
tersburg ; but the Russians have had an embassy at Pekin : 
the Chinese know that the two great Western Powers with 
whom they most are brought in contact have been fighting, 
and they have heard the Russian version of the issue. They 
know that the English were beaten at Petropaulowski, — 
they have heard of the retreat from Castries Bay : they 
know, or hope, that in defying England they may count on 
Russia for a friend, and the expectation may well have en- 
couraged them to give vent to their hatred of us. Lastly, 
although we should as little expect to find traces of direct 
Muscovite intrigue in Bengal as at Canton, yet we should 
doubt as little that the spent force of the struggle in the 
Euxine was felt upon the Ganges. The mutiny of the Se- 
poys we now know to have been long meditated : if they 
intended to rise agains't us, they must have looked forward 
for years past (our own fears must have taught them to do 
it) to a Russian invasion as their best opportunity ; and the 
knowledge that the masters whom they hated were actually 
at war with Russia, the accounts of our sufferings and dif- 
ficulties in the Crimea which were as rife in the Indian press 
as in our own, may have shown them that we were as liable 
as the rest of mankind to misfortune, and may have assisted 
easily to stimulate their restlessness. Of this, at least, we 
may be sure, that if it was understood in the East that Rus- 
sia and England, instead of enemies, were cordial friends, 
— that they recognized each other's position, and would as- 



The Eastern Question. 423 

sist each other in difficulties, — the imagination of resistance 
or rebellion would be quenched in the certainty of its hope- 
lessness. 

We are able to cope with our difficulties : we shall crush 
the miserable Bengalese, who have dishonored humanity 
by their ferocity. We shall exact an expiation for their 
crimes, at the tale of which their children's children will 
quake. The Shah of Persia will repent if he trifles with 
his treaties. The Chinese can be compelled to make ten- 
fold restitution for the burnt factories at Canton. We 
understand the measure of our" power. Yet the sufferings 
which we have endured, and shall endure before the work 
is finished — the punishment which we shall inflict, falling 
unequally as it must fill on innocent as well' as guilty, even 
the crimes themselves which we must revenge — these are 
no light things, to be dismissed with indifference. The 
eighty millions of money buried in the mud at Balaclava, 
which have bought so imperfect results for us, would have 
covered India with a meshwork of railways. AYe are com- 
pelled to ask whether, after all, these results, or others fjir 
better, might not have been arrived at by another road ; or, 
if the past was inevitable, whether for the future some 
wiser policy may not be devised ? A wiser policy — per- 
haps we ought to say at once, not the policy of the Peace 
Society, which might answer reasonably in the millennium, 
when all things are to go well of themselves, but which 
while men are the half-brutes which we find them is a 
dream of imbecility. 

When the Crystal Palace was opened in Hyde Park, all 
nations, it was supposed, were meeting there in a new 
spirit. The race was no longer to be to the strong, but to 
the skillful and the industrious. Cannon were to be melted 
into steam-engines, and bayonets twisted into reaping- 
machines. As we passed under the gleaming aisles, we 
were entering the temple of a new era. Enlightened self- 
interest was to work a revolution where the Gospel had 



424 TJie Eastern Question. 

failed. How has the vain imagination withered ! The 
answer to the prayer of the Archbishop of Canterbury has 
come down in the battle whirlwind — distress of nations, 
and perplexity. The Angel of Justice, to whom alone it is 
given to introduce order into this planet, is painted, in one 
hand with the balance, in the other — not with eloquent 
persuasion, and reason, and commercial interests, and col- 
lective wisdom — but with the sword. The voluble lips 
of the peace prophets are for a time closed. We have no 
leisure in these stern days for sentimental folly, which must 
be content to wait for a faireT occasion. 

Well, then, let us look, at any rate, at the facts as they 
really are ; and if we commence with a broad sweejj, we 
shall return again upon our subject with a clearer under- 
standing of its bearings. The Turkish question is part of 
the Asiatic question ; the Asiatic question is part of one 
which is wide as the world. Turn where we will in Asia, 
from Constantinople to Pekin, we see everywhere but 
one phenomenon — a swift and absolute social dissolution. 
Oriental governments. Oriental society. Oriental religions, 
are giving way from internal weakness and pressure from 
without. Of any principle of internal organizing life there 
is no symptom anywhere. Brahminism, Buddhism, Par- 
seeism, either linger as shadows or as horrid and hideous 
superstitions. Mahometanism, which in the sixth century 
rode over the earth as a purifying power, has corrupted, 
like the creed which it displaced, retaining nothing of its 
old self except ferocity and fanaticism. Even China, 
whose constitution had reached its maturity in the days 
of Pericles, and has preserved itself unchanged for more 
than twenty centuries, is failing and disintegrating at last. 
In a few more years, the ruin will be complete.^ 

So it has been with half of the human race ; with the 

1 The rebellions in China since these words were written, have de- 
stroyed a third of the enormous population of the empire. A hundred 
millions of human creatures have lost their lives in a convulsion, of which 
the war between China and England was the provoking cause. 



The Eastern Question. 425 

other half the expansion and growth have been no less 
marvelous. Four centuries ago, the Mahometans divided 
the Spanish Peninsula with the princes of Castile and 
Portugal. The Russians were but one of the unnumbered 
races who shared the plains of Tartary ; the French hardly 
defended their independence against England and Bur- 
gundy ; and the English could call their own but half a 
narrow island, and their number scarcely perhaps exceeded 
the present population of a first-class Chinese city. The 
forest tree, if it break down, will become a heap of earth 
and dust : the single acorn, if it be alive, will exj)and into 
the oak ; if necessary, it will people the world with oaks. 
The Portuguese and the Spaniards spread east and west, 
and founded empires. The Russians, taking root round 
Moscow, formed as it were an expanding circle of firm 
ground in the midst of the surrounding anarchy, and grew 
and conquered it. The English and French stretched 
across the Atlantic, and contended for North America ; and 
the result of this conflict, which neither foresaw, has been 
the creation of a new power equal in strength to either. 
They went eastward, and struggled for Hindostan. If 
there England prevailed, France has been indemnified by 
another conquest in another continent, and has formed in 
Northern Africa if not an outlet for her energies, at least a 
school for her armies. Thus we have all gone forward, 
sometimes as eneniies, always as rivals, yet with ever ac- 
celerating speed. The Spaniards have fallen out of the 
race, but their place has been taken by the Americans ; 
and it may now be said that the control of the future for- 
tunes of the Eastern nations, and the ultimate empire over 
them, lies between France, Russia, the United States, and 
ourselves. We have accused each other of ambition, of 
aggression ; we have watched one another with anxious 
jealousy ; we have looked eagerly for the mote in our 
neighbors' eyes, careless altogether whether the beam was 
in our own ; or, ag-ain, we have talked vaguelv of " manifest 



426 The Eastern Question, 

destinies," or " designs of Providence." But destiny in 
these matters is but the natural superiority of moral 
strength over moral weakness ; and the aggressions, in the 
long run (as in our own case we can see clearly enough), 
are the natural and inevitable consequences of the inter- 
course between civilized nations and barbarians. 

Our merchants open a trade with India; they are re- 
ceived with* welcome, they build factories, accumulate 
property, and then either they awaken the cupidity of the 
native rulers, who desire to rob them, or they are injured 
by the people, and can obtain no redress. They appeal to 
their own government : there is a dispky of force — an 
indemnity is exacted for the past, a piece of ground is de- 
manded as a guarantee for the future, and a weak power 
makes promises which it has no intention of observing. 
Then comes, perhaps, some act of treachery or cruelty — 
a murder, or perhaps a massacre. Sterner jDunishment is 
necessary; troops are sent,, native rulers are deposed; a 
force must be maintained for future defense, and the nu- 
cleus of an empire is commenced. The territories of other 
princes adjoin our frontiers : we make treaties with them, 
which their subjects do not observe. There are robberies 
on the border which must be redressed, and the rulers are 
too feeble to insist upon it ; or they make coalitions against 
us which, for our own security, we must break ; or English 
parties are formed in the native courts, which we naturally 
encourage. So by degrees the strong power grows, gen- 
erally with actual justice on its side, never without pretense 
of justice ; and taking with it as it goes forward strength 
instead of weakness, order instead of anarchy, it creates its 
title by the benefits which it conveys. At length the na- 
tive powers are altogether overshadowed; they court our 
protection, and are at last absorbed by it, or they attack us 
desperately, and are overwhelmed. We find ourselves the 
lords of an empire which our rivals say we have taken by 
force from its natural owners ; while, in detail, each sepa- 



The Eastern Question. 4-7 

rate step which we have made in advance has been forced 
upon us by necessity or justice. Such, in outline, is the 
history of all conquests which have grown, like those of 
England, out of commerce. 

The growth of Russia has been different, yet for Russian 
writers equally easy to justify in detail — equally carrying 
with it an ultimate justification in its results. It is a weary 
business to hear English orators declaim on Poland, and 
foreigners in return pointing scornfully to the centuries of 
Irish misery. "We censure others freely : and we ourselves 
do the same thing. But leaving Poland and looking to the 
East, where our present business lies, the enormous tract 
now marked on maps as the Russian Empire in Asia was 
not so long ago the hunting-ground of nomad tribes of 
hereditary robbers. It is now drilled into quiet and in- 
dustry — roads cross it, cities rise over it, property and life 
are secure upon it. The same blessings which England has 
conferred on India, in smaller degree, perhaps, but the 
same in kind, the Government of St. Petersburg has car- 
ried from the Baltic to Behring's Straits, from the White 
Sea to the banks of the Tigris. Neither our administration 
nor theirs is perfect ; the worst of the two is immeasurably 
preferable to anarchy. We clamor at the manner in which 
Russia has made her conquests. We should remember the 
proverb of those who live in glass houses : Russia may 
have been, if possible, less scrupulous, but the question is 
merely of degree. Let us compare, for instance, the two 
latest examples of our several aggressions. 

The Turks, originally mere barbarian conquerors, treated 
everywhere their Christian subjects as an inferior race. 
The evidence of Christians was not admitted in courts of 
justice; their property even by law was scarcely secured 
from pillage : as every one who had travelled in Turkey 
knew, they were the pariahs of society^ regarded rather as 
dogs than men. Some modification of these iniquities had 
been extorted by the Czars, and had been conceded in 



428 The Eastern Question. 

treaties ; but even the concessions granted had fallen short 
of what might have been justly demanded ; while such as 
they were, in the Asiatic provinces at least, they were 
never enforced. The right was j3lainly on one side, the 
wrong was as plainly upon the other. And had Constanti- 
nople been on the site of Kazan, and Asia Minor on the 
frontier of Siberia, we should have looked on with indiffer- 
ence and perhaps with applause, while an effete but per- 
secuting race were stripped of their j^ower of doing evil. 
The situation, which affected little the justice of the quarrel, 
converted demands which would elsewhere have been rea- 
sonable into a nefarious aggression. War began, and was 
called an unjustifiable invasion. The Turkish fleet was 
attacked in harbor and destroyed ; and Europe rang with 
the massacre of Sinope. 

Turning to the other picture : a Chinese coasting vessel 
having on board persons suspected of piracy was at anchor 
in the Canton river, and carrying, lawfully or unlawfully 
(for the point is disputed), the English flag. She was 
boarded by the local authorities ; the crew being Chinese 
subjects, and accused of having committed crimes in the 
Chinese waters, were seized and carried ashore for trial. 
There is not a doubt that in any French or American 
harbor the same course would have been pursued, and 
would have been allowed as a matter of course. Under 
circumstances infinitely more open to question, the same 
English flag was hauled down by the Americans at the 
consul's house at Greytown, and there no resentment was 
displayed. The right of a strong power to deal with its 
own subjects in its own waters by its own laws would be 
admitted universally without reserve ; but the Chinese are 
not a strong power, and therefore have not the same rights. 
We are not quarreling with the necessity of dealing very 
different measure to Commissioner Yeh from what we 
should attempt with President Buchanan or Louis Napo- 
leon, only it must be allowed that it is different. We in- 



The Eastern Question. 429 

sist on the right to confer on Chinese subjects the privileges 
of Englishmen — to interfere by force in the government 
of a foreign country ; and when our demands are not com- 
plied with — when the reparation which we demand is not 
given with the absolute submission which we require, we 
do not even appeal to the supreme authority — we do not 
even declare war against the Chinese nation ; but we take 
the law into our own hands then and there, and upon the 
spot : we bombard a city, sacrificing, of course, innumera- 
ble lives. As the quarrel deepens, we destroy a fleet five 
times as numerous as that which perished at Sinope. Had 
the independence of China been of the same moment to 
the other great powers as the independence of the Porte — 
had the growth of England in the East been regarded with 
the same jealousy as the advances of Russia into Turkey, 
can we flatter ourselves that the voice of Europe, which 
condemned MenschikofF, would have acquitted Sir John 
Bowring — that when Sinope was stigmatized as an out- 
rage against humanity, the bombardment of Canton would 
have been considered a legitimate act of warfare ? Let us 
call things by their true names. Each of these proceed- 
ings belongs to that dubious class of actions which are 
provoked by circumstances — actions which those who 
commit them consider absolutely right, which a pedantical 
morality shudders at as absolutely wrong ; and the charac- 
ter of which impartial judgment will pronounce upon here- 
after by the ultimate consequences, rather than by the 
immediate motive. If we say that the possession of Con- 
stantinople by the Czar is dangerous to Europe, and must 
not be tolerated, we are speaking like reasonable men. It 
is true ; and we have a right in our own defense to act on 
our conviction. If we hold up our hands in pious horror 
at annexations and aggressions — if we affect to be amazed 
when a vigorous government interferes with its feeble 
neighbors, shortens their frontier, and meddles with their 
administration, we may be speaking in entire conformity 



430 The Eastern Question. 

with the principles which we most of us like to be supposed 
to act upon ; but such language in the mouths of English- 
men must seem, nevertheless, tolerably absurd. 

In truth, were the world wide enough for all of us, 
we should each advance our own way and fulfill our own 
mission, troubling ourselves little with mutual jealousies. 
Unhappily we are, or have been, competitors for the same 
prizes, or we foresee a time when we may become so. The 
inevitable work of annexation goes forward ; and as we 
approach more nearly to each other's frontiers, as countries 
lie at our feet in which we all may claim a share, we watch 
each other with anxiety and terror. Again and again, in 
the last twenty years, our animosities on this ground have 
brought us to the verge of war. The French occupation 
of Algeria is in itself a good thing. Quiet people can till 
the ground there without fear of marauding Arabs. Hon- 
est merchants can trade there without alarm for the pirate's 
flag ; and yet to us, almost till the recent alliance, it was 
an object of mere alarm and annoyance. In 1838, a dread 
of Russia plunged us into the ill-omened invasion of Af- 
ghanistan. In 1840, we barely escaped a quarrel with 
France on the question of Syria and Egypt. The French 
had not forgotten that they once disputed with us for the 
Indian peninsula ; and French officers trained the Sikh 
artillery, whose fatal excellence we felt to our cost upon 
the Sutlej. The Turkish affair came after; and though 
the wound is closed, it is not healed, and it cannot heal 
till in some form it is re-opened ; for the sickly days of 
the Turkish rule are numbered, and will not be prolonged 
by the skillfulest leech in Downing Street. From the 
Russian war grew out the Persian ; we could not avoid it ; 
nor so long as we continue in our present spirit towards 
each other, is there any end to the long vista of similar 
difficulties which open before us. If we would, we cannot 
stand still ; this present war with China has grown out of 
a shadow — a mere casual accident which may occur any 



The Eastern Question, 431 

day. In the Crimea, we had France upon our side, and 
Russia for our only antagonist ; but times change, and one 
quarter of the world is not as another — new combinations 
may be formed. In China another competitor enters upon 
the scene who will not stand by and see us play again the 
same game which we have played in Hindostan. For the 
present, both France and the United States may be pleased 
to see us fight a battle at our own cost by which they will 
profit as well as we ; but when the work is finished, at our 
peril we must seek for no advantages, of which we our- 
selves are to be the monopolists — a single eagle will not 
be allowed to fatten on so rich a carcass as China ; and 
when the present difficulty passes off, the Chinese Em- 
peror, if he is wise, may make his game out of our quarrels. 
The Russians have their embassy at Pekin. Both Rus- 
sians and Americans have their fleets in the Chinese 
waters. And in the common jealousy which England has 
displayed towards them, they have shown a tendency, as 
natural as it is marked, to coalesce. The Celestial Em- 
peror, in his terror of ourselves, may bribe them to become 
his patrons ; and there, where the French have little in- 
terest and little ability to help us, we may find the tables 
turned against us by a combination as formidable as that 
which has crushed Sebastopol. This is no imaginary 
danger ; with the same measure which we mete it shall be 
measured to us : and if we make it our business, as some 
of us pretend, to curb the aggression of the Muscovites — 
to check the growth of the United States, and quarrel with 
them for the protectorate of vagabond Indians upon their 
frontiers — in self-defense they will retaliate upon us in 
our own coin, and teach us that if annexation is a crime, 
the English have no dispensation for the exclusive practice 
of it. 

But annexation is no crime, when it is the substitution 
of a just and vigorous government for a wicked and worth- 
less one. The arbitrary frontier lines which divide king- 



432 The JEastern Question. 

dom from kingdom have no magic in them which limits the 
right of interference, and conveys a license to those who 
live within the boundaries to acknowledge no law but their 
own wills. The conditions cannot be laid down in terms 
and propositions which decide when interference becomes 
justifiable ; but each separate case contains the principles 
of its own adjustment. The liberties of the individual are 
abridged by the interests of the State ; the liberties of each 
particular State must yield to the common interest of hu- 
manity ; and the same right may be said to exist in well- 
ordered nations to coerce vicious and disorderly nations as 
exists in separate communities to punish individual crimi- 
nals. This is the true object of war ; and in this spirit, for 
the most part, after large necessary deductions for the im- 
perfections of all human things, the empires which wield 
the present strength of this planet have grown. Ambition, 
policy, fanaticism, pride of power, and perhaps even baser 
passions, have had their place in building up the fabric ; 
but this is for the most part true, that wherever England, 
France, Russia, and America have set their foot, they have 
taken with them something better than what they have sup- 
planted, and the further that they can go in the same course 
the better for mankind. A military mutiny has broken the 
peace of Hindostan ; but that peace had already lasted for 
a century, and will return again more firmly assured. 
Who can doubt that the Chinese would lead ftir happier 
lives — or if not happier, at least purer and better lives — 
if they too were under a strong just hand, if their country 
was opened to commerce, and themselves wheeled into in- 
tercourse with the rest of the world ? If Asia Minor could 
be governed as Georgia is governed, or as the French 
govern Algeria, the cities with which it once was covered 
might rise again from their ruins, and the shores of the 
Archipelago become once more the garden of the world. 
California, as a Mexican province, was the hunting ground 
oi Indians or the asylum of half-breed cut-throats. Call- 



The Eastern Question. 433 

fornia in ten years had become the cynosure of emigrants, 
the El Dorado of the old imagination. In the luxuriance 
of its growth, evil had sprung up with good. It was the 
scene of aspiring toil, where the finer culture as yet waited 
for admission ; yet who will compare the worst errors of 
the worst governed American State with the degenerate 
ferocity of New Spain ? — who does not feel that with the 
Americans in possession of Mexico property would rise to 
twenty-fold its value, and life would at least be moderately 
secure ? — that in Cuba, if slavery remained, the hateful 
slave-trade would be honorably closed ? 

And it may once for all be assumed, that the human 
race, whatever Cabinets or Parliaments may think of it, 
will not be driven from their inevitable course. The work 
which has begun so largely will go forward. The Asiatic 
independence which survives will narrow down and grow 
feebler, and at last die. The will and the intellect of the 
more advanced races will rule in due time over that whole 
continent. The line of kingdoms which divides the em- 
pires of England and Russia will grow thinner, till their 
frontiers touch. In spite of Clayton-Bulwer treaties, and 
Dallas-Clarendon interpretations of them, the United States 
will stretch their shadow ever farther south. Revolution 
will cease to tear the empire of Montezuma. The falling 
republics of Central America will not forever be a temp- 
tation, by their weakness, to the attacks of lawless ruffians. 
The valley of the mighty Amazon, which would grow corn 
enough to feed a thousand million mouths, must fall at 
length to those who will force it to yield its treasure. The 
ships which carry the commerce of America into the Pa- 
cific, carry, too, American justice and American cannon as 
the preachers of it. The Emperor of Japan supposed that 
by Divine right, doing as he would with his own, he might 
close his comitry against his kind ; that when vessels in 
distress were driven into his ports he might seize their 
crews as slaves, or kill them as unlicensed trespassers. An 

28 



434 TJie Eastern Question. 

armed squadron, with the star banner flying, found its way 
into 'the Japan waters, and his Serene Majesty was in- 
structed that in Nature's statute-book there is no right con- 
ferred on any man to act unrighteously, because it is his 
pleasure ; that in their own time, and by their own means, 
the Upper Powers will compel him, whether he pleases or 
not, to bring his customs into conformity with wiser usage. 

The fact must be accepted then. Order will triumph 
over disorder, industry over idleness, justice over crime. 
Good will grow when it can by its own merit. It will 
enforce itself by arms when it cannot otherwise find en- 
trance. It will be despotic, interfering, dictatorial, aggres- 
sive. If needful, it will obliterate frontiers, invade, depose, 
annex — with the most entire composure. 

These influences, again, will not radiate exclusively from 
ourselves. There are other centres of civilization besides 
England, which England cannot annihilate by denying, 
which it would be wise, therefore, for England to recog- 
nize and admit. Our fashion, hitherto, has been to justify 
our own conquests on the ground of their utility, to con- 
demn all others as rapacity and ambition. We abolish 
without compunction the independence of Oude because 
its court was feeble and licentious, its government dan- 
gerous from its worthlessness. When a Turk is the 
sufferer, and from another hand, we imagine virtues in him 
which have never approached so much as his dreams, and 
we call him the victim of lawless aggi^ession. Fact is 
wiser than we are ; and goes its own way, whether we like 
it or clamor at it. After all necessary allowance for the 
uncertainty of human things, the decisive balance of prob- 
ability declares that, in the immediate future, the Great 
Powers which, by commerce, conquest, and colonization, 
are brought in contact with the surviving barbarians or 
semi-civilized nations, will each continue on the same road ; 
and the choice remains to them whether their relations to 
one another shall continue also the same relations of mu- 



The Eastern Question. 435 

tual jealousy, susj)icion, and distrust, which they have hith- 
erto proved, or whether, once for all, they can arrive at 
some common understanding, no longer closing their eyes 
or opening them, as it suits their separate convenience, but 
looking the truth in the face, and submitting to be guided 
by it. 

Either of these courses is possible. We have seen, how- 
ever, what the past has already cost us, and the same dan- 
gers and difficulties will in the future multiply indefinitely. 
Asiatic independence will daily become more impossible. 
Parties will form, or have already formed, in the various 
courts — Russian parties, English parties, French parties. 
There will be intrigue and faction, and civil war and inva- 
sion. Pashas and governors will revolt ; and as in Egypt, 
in 1840, one of us will support the master; another, the 
rebellious satrap. Other wretched Shah-Soojahs will be 
thrust upon thrones which they will disgrace. Other 
Akhbar Khans will revenge the insults by treachery and 
murder. Which of us cares to know the true deserts of 
the Circassians ? They are opposed to Russia, and there- 
fore we imagine them to be heroes. Yet what worse 
abomination have we heard of the Princes of Oude than 
the willing baseness which feeds the harems of Constanti- 
nople with the daughters of these patriots of the Caucasus ? 
We shall call evil good, and good evil ; careful only to 
support whatever will lend itself to our separate cause ; 
from time to time, as occasion rises, we shall be ourselves 
dragged into the quarrel ; we shall intrigue with one 
another's subjects, stimulating villains like the Sepoys to 
rebellion, in the name of liberty. We shall be precipitated 
one upon the other, tearing each other to pieces for Tur- 
key, Egypt, Persia, Cabul, or China, each of which will be 
cursed by the independence which one or other of us may 
be fighting to inflict upon it — each of which would be in- 
finitely blessed in lapsing honestly under any one of our 
separate protectorates. Sometimes, as in the recent strug- 



436 The Eastern Question. 

gle, the balance of power may be on the side of England, 
but m a conflict where justice will be determined by inter- 
est, other coalitions will rise on the wheel, and our turn 
may come to struggle single-handed against a confederacy. 
Looking to the complications before us, which will not be 
avoided — looking to the elements of folly and fanaticism, 
of conceit and vice, of cruelty and treachery, which enter 
so deeply into the character of Asiatics — we may feel 
some certainty that if we allow ourselves to drift any 
longer as the current of circumstances for the moment 
flows, the world is entering on one of the most frightful 
centuries which history as yet has chronicled. 

The same event will in the end be arrived at : weary at 
length of strife, those who survive the conflict will be forced 
to acquiesce in a peaceful settlement, and after ages will 
wonder at the perversity which refused to accept tranquillity 
except at the price of wretchedness. 

But there is time yet to strike into a better path : and 
little as the present temper of this country promises the 
adoption of it, we shall hope against hope for a fairer future. 
There is an alternative besides drifting with the winds and 
the waves ; let us imagine for a moment that the last five 
years have been blotted out, — that Sir Hamilton Seymour 
is again listening to Nicholas as he descants on the sick 
man's approaching end, and with another chart will attempt 
a fresh channel. 

" Sire," we will suppose him to have replied, " what you 
say is undoubtedly correct. The Turks, or the upper ranks 
among them, have lost the virtues of their ancestors, while 
they have retained their vices. Every symptom which has 
preceded the dissolution of empires is to be found rife at 
Constantinople, and they would long ago have been hurled 
back across the Bosphorus, or have fallen to pieces by in- 
ternal revolution, had it not suited our convenience to main- 
tain a feeble people in possession of a position which in your 
hands would be danwrous. But we admit that so artificial 



The Eastern Question. 437 

an existence cannot be sustained forever. The Turkish 
provinces fall away from them, or crumble into anarchy. 
The Sultan promises you to prohibit the persecution of the 
Christians, but he is unable to fulfill his engagements. AVe 
are making ourselves responsible for the existence of a gov- 
ernment which is a curse to its subjects ; and perhaps, as 
3^ou say, the time is near when it will be no longer possible. 
But while the English Government recognizes fully the ne- 
cessity of j)i'eparing for a change, they cannot consent to 
any private arrangement between your Majesty and them- 
selves. It may be necessary to abolish the Turks out of 
Europe, or partition their provinces, or the form may be 
left, while the administration is placed in other and better 
hands. You answer for Austria ; but the French, at least, 
must be consulted, — we cannot move without them. It is 
but just, and prudent as well as just, that every government 
whose interests are affected by the fall or the maintenance 
of Turkey, and who have the power to interfere, should have 
a voice in this matter. 

" But your Highness has opened the question : permit 
me now to extend it. Turkey is not the only Asiatic king- 
dom in which you, and we, and France, are interesteil. 
Your empire and ours have grown rather through our ne- 
cessity than our ambition ; but if India was rather forced 
upon us than sought by us, we cannot afford to lose it ; and 
a,3 we dreaded Najooleon's menaced invasion from Egypt 
and Persia, so we have dreaded you. We have been driven, 
in the supposed necessity of defending ourselves, to meddle 
in the kingdoms of Central Asia. Our borders are stretch- 
ing northwards towards you, and yours are reaching down- 
wards towards us. What is to be done with the kingdoms 
which lie between us, whose weakness and lawlessness will 
compel interference, but which we shall fight for at last if 
we do not understand each other ? In China, too, whicli 
seemed so long to defy all change, and to stand aloof in its 
isolation, we have been forced to meddle ; and we may bo 



438 The Easteryi Question. 

obliged to meddle there again. In that difficulty the United 
States will claim a voice, and so will you. Our real inter- 
ests are all identical. We desire that the Chinese shall en- 
ter the society of nations ; shall open their ports to our 
commerce ; shall observe their engagements, and respect 
the laws which regulate the intercourse of the world. But 
it may be necessary to lay force upon them before they will 
understand fully their true relations towards us. In the 
last war, we were obliged to take from them a small fraction 
of territory. In the next, we shall perhaps ask for more, 
and then you may take umbrage ; you may be afraid that 
we intend to found in China a second Hindostan. Our 
American friends may take the same view ; and if there is 
a prey in the wind, they may claim a share in the carcass, 
and ask for it disagreeably. 

" And once more (for all these lines radiate from the 
same centre, and may be dealt with on the same principle) : 
You know how jealous both you and we have been about 
the French in Africa ; about the Americans on the Isthmus 
of Darien and in Mexico. Of course the French will do 
better in Algiers than the Moors could do ; and to Mexico 
ifself an American conquest would be an infinite advantage ; 
but we are all suspicious and afraid of each other. Each 
fresh accession of empire is an accession of strength ; and 
strength gained by one may J)e used to the disadvantage of 
the rest. Now, is it not possible that, taking this Turkish 
difficulty as our starting-point, we may arrive in concert at 
some general principles of conduct which shall be our guide 
in our relations with one another, when we come in contact 
with such other countries as it is desirable that we should 
severally influence ? I do not speak of annexation ; there 
are many places where we would gladly escape the neces- 
sity of annexation, if by any other means the desired results 
of reasonable government could be attained. At present, 
the half-civilized nations are encouraged by the knowledge 
of our rivalries. If a pressure is laid on them by any one 



The Eastern Question. 439 



of the Great Powers, they understand that they may look 
with confidence to the support of the others. Let them be 
informed that henceforward they shall encourage no such 
hope ; that when they offend against the laws of civilization, 
the joint pressure of four strong nations will unite to com- 
pel them into wiser conduct. English officers are sent into 
Bohkara ; the Khan sees that our hand is far off, and can- 
not reach him, and they are villainously murdered. If the 
Khan had understood that such a crime would have been 
resented by your Highness, — that he would be treated by 
you as an offender against the common laws of humanity — 
the certainty of punishment would have held his hand. In 
Constantinople, at Teheran, at Khiva, at Cabul, at Pekin, at 
Japan, let us insist then on the admission of our representa- 
tives, who shall be instructed to act together in a cordial 
and generous spirit. If necessary, let the native courts re- 
vise their laws. If they refuse compliance with our sugges- 
tions, let them be informed that we shall unite to enforce 
compliance. If they pretend that they are without power 
over their own subjects, let them be taught, if desirable, by 
experience, that the power will be supplied by us. It will 
be enough to insist on a few broad conditions. Intolerance 
must be at an end. The missionaries of Christianity must 
have free course through the world, and free exercise of re- 
ligion be permitted everywhere, without interference, with- 
out restriction, without the infliction of disabilities, political 
and social. Let trade be free, and property secure. Let 
the ways be opened everywhere to capital and enterprise, 
and the adventurers from our various countries will then 
carry with them spontaneously the habits and the thoughts 
which will spare us the necessity of conquest, and create, in 
a few generations, from within, an insensible revolution, — 
a civil and spiritual renovation. The moral weight of our 
alliance for such an object will, in most cases, of itself com- 
pel submission. If it be refused, a fraction of the force 
which our present suspicions of each other oblige us to 



440 Tfie Eastern Question. 

maintain will be adequate to a purpose as much simpler and 
easier as it is nobler and better, and more worthy of our 
position among mankind. Such a course promises the best 
for Asia, and for Turkey as part of it. It may fail ; but 
the probabilities are in its favor ; and when the happiness 
of so large a portion of the human family is at stake, we 
must do the best which we can for them, and no longer deal 
with their interests by the uncertain suggestions of emer- 
gencies as they happen to arise. 

" And again — our mutual relations appear likely to be 
no less improved. In the first place, a common engage- 
ment in a great generous purpose will be the best security 
that we shall keep the peace among ourselves. Govern- 
ments-may change, but a bond of union will remain, not 
easily broken. We shall study each other's habits in a 
larger spirit ; no longer feeling it necessary to our position 
to magnify faults and close our eyes to our respective ex- 
cellences. 

" Again, the success of the policy which I propose will 
depend on the liberality and general confidence with which 
we engage in it. We must abstain from vexatious and 
impertinent interference with one another on minor mat- 
ters ; and therefore, should either of us now or hereafter 
show signs of a desire for separate aggrandizement — if, 
in a serious matter like the present, when candor and 
unselfishness can alone lead to a useful result, symptoms 
should appear of private, unacknowledged objects being 
sought, — the compact might be so arranged as to secure 
the union of three powers against the fourth. 

" Again, since it is impossible to foresee the contingen- 
cies which may arise, and large free action must be left 
us on our frontiers and wherever we have interests, so if 
there be a question of declaring war, or of annexing a 
province, such a step should not be entere I on witliout a 
conference, or, at least, without separate consultation of 
the different governments. We are weak mei^ and apt to 



The Eastern Question. 441 

be especially weak when we are plaintiffs, judges, and juries 
in our own quarrels ; and although on the whole we may- 
desire to act rightly, we have sometimes cause to wish that 
we had shown greater forbearance, and might have profited 
by the assistance of an independent opinion. 

" Your Highness and your predecessors doubtless un- 
derstood better than we did your quarrels with the Turks, 
and you felt yourselves justified in taking their conquests 
in Europe back from them ; but your conduct could be 
represented by your enemies in more dubious colors. We 
are not the persons to throw stones. Your Highness 
knows Mr. Cobden, and may have read his pamphlet on 
" AVars in India." The affair at Rangoon was not as clear 
as we could wish it ; and the less perhaps that is said of 
the opium question the better. All these points would 
have been benefited by freer ventilation ; and although, 
nevertheless, the Pruth might still have been the boundary 
of the Russian Empire, and England might still have oc- 
cupied Pegu and brought the Chinese to their senses, the 
disputes would all have improved in form, and the con- 
clusions have been more satisfactory. Letting bygones 
be bygones, let us try for the future the other system. 
There will be less occasion, we may hope, for annexation ; 
but a cause may arise, it is possible, as a contingency. 
Constantinople is a ticklish subject. But it might be de- 
sirable, for instance, that the French should occupy Egypt 
and Syria. We ourselves may have to take the province 
ol Canton. The Japanese may break their engagement 
with the government at Washington. Or again, we know 
how Cuba lies at the mouth of the Mississippi, and we 
know the influence which in the long run these geographi- 
cal positions exercise. As things now are, the Americans 
— if Spain will not sell Cuba — may pick a quarrel for it ; 
or some filibustering expedition like that of Lopez may be 
fitted out and gain some success there or elsewhere ; and 
the temptation might become too strong to resist, and then 



442 The Eastern Question. 

we should be all in confusion, and the jDcaee of the world 
would be broken for a business which in itself no reason- 
able person would regret. Let it be agreed among us that 
these and all other changes, when really reasonable, shall 
be permitted and encouraged, so that they are efi'ected in a 
reasonable manner, and all fair objections are fairly can- 
vassed, considered, and answered. Then there will be less 
food provided for captious persons, less material for the 
mutual reproaches of cabinets, and we shall not be drawn 
any longer to seek ex post facto justifications of arbitrary 
cont^uests in the advantages wliich have resulted from 
them." 

In some such lanii-uaoe we can conceive Sir Hamilton 
Seymour to have replied to the Emperor Nicholas, and 
England to have been richer by eighty millions of money, 
and tens of thousands of brave men. Or rather, perhaps, 
it is too promising a vision, and we can conceive nothing 
of the kind. It is no place for an ambassador to propound 
political theories. Russia was disguising a selfish ambition 
in the midst of designs which were but joartially honest, 
and she required to be chastised. But Russia has bought 
lier lesson, and we too have paid heavily for our mistakes 
— willful or inevitable. The difficulty is postponed, but it 
is not overcome ; and although for the present we may rest 
contented in the Anglo-French alliance, it is idle to conceal 
from ourselves that it is subject to accident ; that Russia 
and America are mighty powers, which can neither be ig- 
nored nor despised — powers which will and must exercise 
a vast influence upon the future condition of the world. 
A fabric of policy, as well as of stone and plaster, stands 
more firmly on four j)illars than on two. The past of all 
of us poorly bears inspection ; it is better for us to bury 
our recriminations, and endeavor to be wise for the future. 

Suggestions little in harmony with the feelings towards 
our late enemies in which we have indulged so liberally 
may seem at first not easily tolerable ; l)ut the hostility of 



The Uastern Question. 443 

nations is not as the quarrels of individual persons, and 
ceases, or ought to cease, when the immediate differences 
are composed. It were easy to write much on such a 
subject ; but it is enough for the present to have sketched 
an outline, and details are beyond our purpose. 

There remains but to consider such objections as may 
be urged, not by noisy, hysterical persons, who imagine 
themselves patriots because they can point rhetorical com- 
monplaces on England's mission, and the destinies of the 
Anglo-Saxon race, but by those who can be contented to 
learn from facts, and to reason upon them calmly. 

And first, it may be said that such a scheme as we have 
proposed, however we may hide its character under plausi- 
ble disguises, is, in fact, an organized conspiracy against 
the liberties of weak nations who cannot defend themselves. 
In gigantic imitation of the partition of Poland, you now 
wish to partition Asia. The true remedy would be, to 
abstain from plunder ; and you suggest, instead, a quiet 
division of it. We answer, that Asia is now being par- 
titioned ; year after year, huge segments of it lapse under 
one or other of our several dominions, and the only means 
by which the process can be arrested is, to prevent the 
native princes from indulging any longer in conduct which 
compels us, whether we desire it or not, to remove or pun- 
ish them. That a concert of the Great Powers would be 
a conspiracy is quite true : it would be a conspiracy in the 
sense in which all society is a conspiracy — a conspiracy 
in which the better sort of persons lay their strength to- 
gether to oblige the rest at their peril to submit to order. 
Neither man nor nation can plead a right to do what is 
wrong ; let us do right of ourselves, if we are able and 
willing ; if by any means we are out of the right way, let 
us be thankful to any beneficent person who will rein us 
and drag us back into it by force. This is to conspire 
against license, it is not to conspire against liberty ; nor 
would liberty, true liberty, be exposed to danger, either in 



444 The Eastern Question. 

Europe or in Asia. In Asia there is none to injure. In 
Europe, at present, however it may have been in times 
past, the true enemy of freedom is not Russia, but Aus- 
tria ; and neither Austria nor any of the German Powers 
would claim a voice in questions in which they are in no 
way concerned. Austrian influence, legitimate and illegit- 
imate, is confined to Europe, and cannot extend into other 
continents. And even in Europe it is happily limited, and 
need not be enlarged. Austria's best friends would not 
desire to obtain for her an increase of hatred, by an ex- 
tension of her detested administration into Wallachia and 
Moldavia — the only countries among those of which we 
are speaking in the settlement of which she might legiti- 
mately claim to be consulted. 

But secondly, is not such an alliance with such objects 
impossible ? Who ever heard or read of a coalition of na- 
tions, except in self-defense, or else for the perpetration of 
some iniquity? Yet in this great age, so fertile in new 
things, it is but one more novelty ; and we will ask another 
question, — Is it, or is it not, desirable ? If we have a suf- 
ficient answer here, we will not believe in impossibilities. 
Difficult it may be ; but was there ever a great or good 
thing achieved which has not been full of difficulty ? And 
why are men of genius sent among us, except to cope with 
difficulty and conquer it? Two channels are open into 
which we may steer : one we know to be full of shoals and 
breakers ; the other, though untried, appears to be deep 
water. The experiment is worth the attempt. The future 
is dark ; we know not whither it may lead us ; but we fly 
from an evil too well ascertained, and our intentions we 
presume to be honest. If we fail, the fliilure can lead to 
nothing worse than the certainty which lies before us if we 
remain passive ; at any moment we can fall back upon Lord 
Clarendon, and " drift " into war. If we succeed, the 
statesmen whose names are connected with the diplomatic 
revolutiou \Yill take their place among the immortal bene- 
fiictors of mankind. 



SCIENTIFIC METHOD APPLIED TO 
HISTORY. 

AN ADDRESS TO THE DEVONSHIRE ASSOCIATION 

FOR THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF SCIENCE 

AND LITERATURE. 



Ladies and Gentlemen, — 1 cannot but congratulate 
this country, — my own country in which I was born and 
to which I am j^roud to belong, — on the formation and the 
success of this Association. There was a time when Dev- 
onshire was, to use a modern phrase, the most advanced 
county in England. During the hundred years which fol- 
lowed the Reformation, Lancashire and Yorkshire, Durham 
and Northumberland, were the strongholds of old-fashioned 
opinions. They were places where everything that was old 
was consecrated, and new ideas were intolerable. Somer- 
setshire, Worcestershire, Cornwall, Devonshire, were the 
chief seats of the staple manufacturers of England. They 
were progressive, energetic, full of intellectual activity, tak- 
ing the lead in what was then the great liberal movement 
of the age. The knights and squires of the North were 
wrapped up in themselves. They rarely left their own 
houses. They rarely saw the face of a stranger, unleis of 
some border marauder. The merchants of Plymouth and 
Dartmouth were colonizing the New World, and opening a 
trade with every accessible port in the Old. The Haw- 
kinses, the Drakes, the Davises, the Raleighs, were the 
founders of the ocean empire of Great Britain ; while, 
on the other hand, — for mental energy is always many- 



446 Scientific Method applied to History. 

sided, — Devonshire, in giving birth to Hooker, bestowed 
the greatest of her theologians on the Church of England. 

Times have somewhat changed. The march of intellect 
has moved northward. The soil up there, after lying fallow 
so many centuries, disclosed the reservoirs of force which 
were stored in the coal measures. The productive capaci- 
ties of the island shifted in the direction where there was 
most material for them to work with, while Devonshire 
rested on its laurels. Improved means of communication, 
— roads, canals, railways, the electric telegraph, — have 
diminished the importance of the smaller harbors or towns, 
and thrown the business of the country into a few enormous 
centres. The agricultural districts have been drained of their 
more vigorous minds ; while from the same and other 
causes local j^eculiarities are tending to disappear. There 
were once many languages spoken in this island. There 
are now but three. Even our own Devonshire dialect, 
which Raleigh used at the court of Elizabeth, is becoming 
a thing of the past. 

Yet as one person is never quite the same as another per- 
son, as each has peculiarities proper to himself which consti- 
tute his mdividual importance, so I hope the time is far off 
when the ancient self-administered English counties will 
subside into jDrovinces, — when London will be England in 
the sense that Paris is France. English character and 
English freedom dej)end comparatively little on the form 
which the Constitution assumes at Westminster. A cen- 
tralized democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute 
monarch ; and if the vigor of the nation is to continue un- 
impaired, each individual, each family, each district, must 
preserve as far as possible its independence, its self-com- 
pleteness, its powers and its privilege to manage its own af- 
fairs, and think its own thoughts. Neither Manchester nor 
Plymouth are yet entirely London, and I hope never will 
be. And it is for this reason that I welcome the formation 
of societies like the present. They are symptoms that the 



Scientific Method applied to History. 447 

life is not all concentrated at the heart, — that if we are 
carried along in the stream of national progress, we do not 
mean to float passively where the current leads us, and that 
in the present as in the past we intend to bear an intelligent 
and active share in the ijeneral movement of the a^e. 

The contribution which I can myself offer on the present 
occasion is an extremely humble one. You include among 
your objects the encouragement of literature and art ; but, 
from the nature of the case, science must hold the first 
place with you. Science thrives in the sunlight. Able 
men are engaged upon different departments of knowledge, 
but they are all dependent on one another ; the geologist, 
the physiologist, the chemist, each require the help of the 
other. The astronomer cannot stir without the mathemati- 
cian and the telescope maker. Not a single branch of 
inquiry can be pursued successfully alone. You meet, you 
read papers, you comj^are notes ; and the discoveries of the 
S23ectroscope explain the composition of the stars. 

Literature, on the other hand, is a thing of the closet. 
The writer of books must take counsel chiefly with him- 
self : he must look as much within as without ; and his 
work, if it is to be a book at all and not a mere compila- 
tion, must be in part the creation of his own mind. Even 
his materials no one else can collect for him. He must 
look for them in situ, with all their natural surroundings, 
or they will not yield to him their proper significance. 

Nevertheless, there are certain principles common to all 
pursuits whose object is truth, and not mere amusement. 
History, the subject with which my own life has been 
mainly occupied, is concerned as much as science with 
external facts. Philosophies of history, theories of his- 
tory, general views of history, are for the most part, as 
metaphysicians say, evolved out of the inner conscious- 
ness. History itself depends on exact knowledge, on the 
same minute, impartial, discriminating observation and 
analysis of particulars which is equally the basis of science ; 



448 Seientijie 3Ietliod applied to RlHtory. 

and I have thought that I cannot turn my present oppor- 
tunity to better account than by sketching the conditions 
of historical study, and noting the various phases through 
which it has passed at different periods. 

Historical facts are of two kinds : the veritable outward 
fact — whatever it was which took place in the order of 
things — and the account of it which has been brought 
down to us by more or less competent persons. The first 
we must set aside altogether. The eternal register of 
human action is not open to inspection ; we are concerned 
wholly with the second, which are facts also, though facts 
different in kind from the other. The business of the 
historian is not with immediate realities which we can see 
or handle, but with combinations of reality and human 
thought which it is his business to analyze and separate 
into their comjDonent parts. So far as he can distinguish 
successfully he is a historian of truth ; so far as he fails he 
is the historian of opinion and tradition. 

It is, I believe, a received principle in such sciences as 
deal with a past condition of things, to explain everything, 
wherever possible, by the instrumentality of causes which 
are now in operation. Geologists no longer ascribe the 
changes Avhich have taken j)lace in the earth's surface, 
either to the interference of an external power, or to vio- 
lent elemental convulsions, of which we have no experience. 
Causes now visibly acting in various parts of the universe 
will interpret most, if not all, of the phenomena ; and to 
these it is the tendency of science more and more to ascribe 
them. In the remotest double star which the telescope 
can divide for us, we see working the same familiar forces 
which govern the revolutions of the planets of our own 
system.- The spectrum analysis finds the vapors and the 
metals of earth in the aurora and in the nucleus of a comet. 
Similarly we have no reason to believe that in the past 
condition of the earth, or of the earth's inhabitants, there 
were functions energizing of which we have no modern 



Scientific 31etJiod applied to History. 449 

counterparts. Confused and marvelous stories come down 
to us from the early periods of what is called history, but 
we look for the explanation of them in the mind or imagi- 
nation of ignorant persons. The key is to be found in 
tendencies still visible in children, in uneducated or credu- 
lous men, or in nations which loiter behind in civilization 
in various parts of the world. Nee Deus intersit is a rule 
of history as well as of art. The early records of all na- 
tions are full of portents and marvels ; but we no longer 
believe those portents to have taken place in actual fact. 
Language was once held to have been communicated to 
the original man, perfectly organized and developed. It is 
now admitted that language grew like every other art. It 
had its beginning in a few simple phrases which extended 
as knowledge was enlarged. The initial process is repeated 
in the special words and expressions which clever children 
originate for themselves in every modern nursery. 

At the dawn of civilization, when men began to observe 
and think, they found themselves in possession of various 
faculties — first, their five senses, and then imagination, 
fancy, reason, memory. All alike affected their minds with 
impressions and emotions. They did not distinguish one 
from the other. They did not know why one idea of 
which they were conscious shovdd be more true than 
another. They looked round them in continual surprise, 
conjecturing fantastic explanations of all that they saw and 
heard. Their traditions and their theories blended one 
into another, and their cosmogonies, and their philosophies, 
and their histories, are all alike imaginative and poetical. 
The idea of truth of fact as distinguished from subjective 
conceptions, had not yet been so much as recognized. It 
was never perhaps seriously believed as a scientific reality, 
that the sun was the chariot of Apollo, or that Saturn had 
devoured his children, or that Siegfried had been bathed in 
the dragon's blood, or that earthquakes and volcanoes were 
caused by buried giants who were snorting and tossing in 

29 



450 Scientific Method applied to History. 

their sleejD, but also it was not disbelieved. These stoi'les 
had not j^resented themselves to the mind in that aspect. 
Legends grew as nursery tales grow now. There is rea- 
son to believe that in their origin the religious theogonies 
and heroic tales of every nation which has left a record of 
itself — of Greece and Rome, of India and Persia and 
Egypt, of Germany and Ireland — are but poetical ac- 
counts of the first impressions produced upon mankind by 
the phenomena of day and night, morning and evening, 
winter and summer. Pluto carries Proserpine to Hades. 
Her mother complains of the rape, and the gods decide 
that she shall reside alternately for six months in light and 
darkness. Proserpine is the genial spirit of warmth and 
long days and life and productiveness, locked away in win- 
ter in the subterranean world, and returning to earth with 
the spring. Seven and twelve are mystical numbers, re- 
curring continually in all legendary histories. " Seven " 
refers to the five planets known before the invention of 
the telescope, and the sun and moon, the seven bodies 
which seemed to have a proper motion among the stars. 
" Twelve " came from the twelve moons which made up the 
year. Meteorological phenomena were personified, passed 
into narratives of fact, and became the foundation of he- 
roic poetry — the tale of Troy, or the songs of the Edda. 
Achilles, and Siegfried, and King Arthur are historical 
personages as much as, and no more than, the woods and 
fountains are the habitation of dryads and water spirits. 

The original historian and the original man of science was 
alike the poet. Before the art of writing was invented ex- 
act knowledge was impossible. The poet's business was to 
throw into beautiful shape the current opinions, traditions, 
and beliefs; and the gifts required from him were simply 
memory, imagination, and music. Each celebrated minstrel 
sang his stories in his own way, adding to them, shaping 
them, coloring them, as suited his peculiar genius. The 
Iliad of Homer, the most splendid composition of this kind 



Scientific Method aiypUed to History. 451 

which exists in the world, is simply a collection of ballads. 
The tale of Troy was the heroic story of Greece, which 
every tribe modified or rearranged. 

Whether the facts were truer one way than the other, — 
whether the troubles at Troy were caused by a quarrel be- 
t\veen Achilles and Agamemnon, as the Iliad says, or be- 
tween Achilles and Ulysses, as we find in the Odyssey, — 
no one thought of asking, any more than the child asks 
whether Red Riding Hood is true, or Cinderella. The story 
in its outline was the property of the race ; to vary the de- 
tails of it was the recognized custom. When the minstrel 
touched his lyre in the banquet hall of the chief, the listen- 
ers were not expecting, like a modern learned society, to 
have their understandings instructed. They cared nothing 
for useful knowledge. They looked to be excited and 
amused ; and if the artist had turned lecturer they would 
have flung their trenchers at his head. The heroic tales 
were to them what fiction, recognized as fiction, is to us, — 
with this difference, that the modern poet or novel writer 
knows that he is inventing ; the bard handed on the na- 
tional tradition ; controlled by it only in outline ; untram- 
meled by adherence to details, yet unconscious of falsehood 
in varying them. 

Thus we see at once that it is a mistake to ask, with re- 
spect to primitive myths and legends, whether the facts are 
true. There are two kinds of truths. There is the truth of 
fact, which we require in the man of science and the modern 
historian. There is the truth of nature and idea, which we 
demand of the poet and the painter. We may say correctly 
that the Iliad and the Odyssey are among the truest books 
that were ever written. Yet Agamemnon and Achilles may 
be as unsubstantial as Aladdin or Melusina. We mean no 
more than that Homer was one of the greatest of artists, and 
liis picture of life in the heroic ages of Greece the most 
faithful. 

An imperfect percei3tion of the distinction has often been 



452 Scientific Metliod applied to History. 

the cause of singular confusion. The mythological poetry 
in the East and West alike was the foundation of national 
religions. While life grew more literal and prosaic, these 
early legends became consecrated. PoeMcal truth was made 
a (guarantee for historical truth ; and Pindar and Socrates, 
who questioned the reality of the strange stories of the 
Olympian gods, were accused of impiet)^ The popular 
o))inion unconsciously betrayed the fallacy involved in it ; 
for whereas historical conclusions in matters of fact are at 
best but probabilities 'differing in degree, the faith in the 
mythological tradition was expected to be complete and uu- 
doubting, extending with equal positiveness to the most mi- 
nute details. Poetical truths may be accepted absolutely. 
Historical truths cannot. We have but to attend to the way 
in which these traditions rose to see our way through tlie 
labyrinth. Facts can be accurately known to us only by 
the most rigid observation and sustained and scrutinizing 
skepticism : the emotional and imaginative intellects of the 
old poets moved freely in their own world of gods and 
giants and enchanters, conscious of no obligation save to be 
true in genius and spirit. Mythic history, mythic theology, 
mythic science, are alike records not of facts but of beliefs. 
They belong to a time when men had not yet learnt to ana- 
lyze their convictions, or distinguish between images vividly 
present in their own minds and an outward reality which 
might or might not correspond with them. 

From the purely mythic period we pass to the semi- 
mythic, where we have to do with real persons, but persons 
seen still through an imaginative halo. 

Every one who has been at an English public school must 
remember the traditions current of the famous boys of a 
generation or two past : how one fellow had cleared a rail 
in the high jump, which he walked under with six inches 
to spare ; how another had kicked the football clear over 
the big elm tree ; how a third had leapt the lock in the ca- 
nal ; and a fourth had fought a bargee twice his own weight, 



Scientijio Method applied to History. 453 

flung him over the bridge-parapets into the river, and then 
leaped in after him to save him from being drowned. The 
boys in question were really at the school, for tlieir names 
are cut in the desks or painted on the school walls. But 
examine closely, and you will find the same story told of 
half a dozen boys at diiFerent schools. Each school has its 
heroes. The air contains a certain number of traditional 
heroic school exploits, and the boys and the exploits are 
brought together. We have here the forces at work which 
created the legends of Theodoric and Charlemagne, of Attila, 
or our own Alfred. 

In the same way those who mix with the world hear an- 
ecdotes of distinguished people, witty sayings, prompt repar- 
tees, wise political suggestions, acts of special beneficence. 
The wit, at the beginning, of course was the wit of some- 
body, — some human lips made the joke or spoke the sar- 
casm, — in some human heart originated the act of charity ; 
but so long as these things are trusted to oral tradition, they 
are treated as common property. The same jest is attrib- 
uted to half a dozen people. One great man is dressed with 
the trappings of many small ones. There is no intention to 
deceive ; but memory is treacherous. The good things are 
recollected easily, while their lawful owner's name is no less 
easily forgotten. Conversation distributes them erroneously, 
but in good faith, according to the imaginative laws of asso- 
ciation. 

This is the process which built up the so-called histories 
of the early lawgivers, of Solon and Lycurgus and Numa ; 
of Confucius and Menu ; of Socrates and Pythagoras and 
Solomon ; of every statesman and philosopher who com- 
mitted his teaching to the memory of his disciples, and left 
posterity to construct his image after its own pleasure. 

Again, we have all been familiar in these late years with 
the resurrection among us of the Ars magica. Witches 
and enchanters having been improved from off the earth, 
a new order of supernaturalism has started up which already 



454 Scientific Method applied to History, 

counts its adherents by hundreds of thousands. Commenc- 
ing with Caghostro and Mesmer, there has appeared a se- 
ries of persons professing to possess the secret of recondite 
spiritual forces, which, without strictly understanding, they 
can command for practical purposes. Clairvoyance and 
mesmerism provide cures for inveterate and chronic dis- 
eases. A mysterious fluid streams from the tips of the fin- 
gers. First men and women are healed. A distinguished 
political economist operates next on a sick cow, and by and 
by makes passes over the asparagus beds. Latterly the 
spirits, or whatever they are, have shown a special ftmcy 
for three-legged tables. They make them run round the 
room, pirouette on a single claw, hop, skip, dance to airs 
produced by invisible musicians. Finally they use them 
as the channel through which they communicate the secrets 
of the other world. 

Probably the entire history of mankind contains no rec- 
ord of a more hopelessly base and contemptible superstition. 
Mumbo-jumbo and the African rain-makers appear to me 
to be respectable in comparison. Yet every one of us must 
have heard circumstantial accounts of such performances, 
time and place minutely given, a cloud of witnesses, and the 
utmost precaution said to have been taken to make decep- 
tion impossible. It is the story of the witch processes over 
again. Once possess people with a belief, and never fear 
that they will find facts enough to confirm it. Never fear 
that they will so tell their stories that the commonest thing 
shall be made to appear marvelous ; that unusual features 
shall be preserved and exaggerated, and everything which 
would suggest a rational explanation shall be dropped out 
of sight and hearing. 

You have here a parallel with the enormous literature of 
ecclesiastical miracles, which for fifteen hundred years was 
poured out in perfect good faith over Europe, and which in 
some countries continues vigorous to the present hour. The 
resemblance passes curiously into details. In both instances 



Scientific Method applied to History. 455 

the necessary quality is faith. Believe, and yovi will see. 
Disbelieve, and you shiy[l be answered according to the 
hardness of your hearts. The credulity which interfered 
with the wonder-working powers of the saints obstructs 
equally the successful action of the spirit-rapper. All pre- 
cautions are taken, we are assured by the initiated, to ex- 
pose fraud or prevent illusion — all but one — the presence 
of cool-headed, scientifically trained observers. The spirits 
do not like skeptics, and object to showing off before them. 
A famous mesmerist once said to me, in some impatience 
with my dissent, that I myself possessed the gift, and that 
I might convince myself of it if I would try the experiment 
at the first cottage by the roadside where there w^as a sick 
person. He checked himself, however, with an after- 
thought. " Alas ! no," he added, " the faith is wanting." 

When faith is present the mesmeric miracle and the so- 
called religious miracle approach each other in every fea- 
ture. A mesmerized handkerchief produces the same effect 
as a relic at a shrine. A mesmerized glass of water is as 
effectual as a glass of holy water. Mr. Home, when the 
room is sufficiently darkened, rises to the ceiling, and floats 
in the air. In a work published in Spain in the last cen- 
tury, under the sanction of the Church, for the instruction 
of spiritual directors, the elevation of the body in the air is 
spoken of as one of the commonest and most notorious 
symptoms in the spiritual growth of saintly young ladies. 
The phenomenon seems as familiar to the fathers confess- 
ors as measles or whooping-cough to an English doctor, and 
circumstantial rules are laid down for the edifymg treatment 
of such cases. The author of the book was no fool, and 
shows a great deal of strong common sense. The elevation 
is spoken of as an undoubted sign of grace — a favorable 
feature, but by no means one of the highest — compatible 
with many faults, and likely in the sex most liable to it to 
create spiritual vanity. The young ladies therefore are 
told, when they feel themselves getting light, to catch hold 



456 Scientific Method applied to History. 

of the nearest post or rail, and keep themselves down ; or 
if they find the attraction, or \fdiatever it is, acting too 
strongly upon them, they are to run away and lock them- 
selves into their rooms, and be lifted up where there is no 
one to admire them. I am not caricaturing. I am translating 
almost literally from the " Lucerna Mystica." Nor ought 
we to impute bad faith to the compilers of these instruc- 
tions. I as little believe that Spanish devotees were in the 
habit of floating in the air as I believe that Mr. Home can 
float when there is light enough to see what is going on. 
The idea, I conceive, originated in the visions of Santa 
Teresa and Saint Francis, who in the delirium of transcen- 
dental emotion imagined that the accidents of the flesh had 
no longer power over them. The Spanish artists who illus- 
trated their lives decorated every church and convent chapel 
in the Peninsula with pictures of these persons dancing 
upon vacancy, and the Spanish religious mind became thus 
saturated with the impression. It was accepted as an ascer- 
tained fact ; it was generalized into a condition of a high 
state of enthusiastic love, and was spoken of and prescribed 
for as one might prescribe for small-pox or a stomach-ache. 

I mention the thing merely as illustrating the tendencies 
of the believing mind in dealing with the facts of life, 
and as explaining the semi-mythical periods of history ; 
where any eminent person was surrounded from his birth 
with extraordinary incidents, and the biographies of saints, 
confessors, martyrs, or national heroes are mere catalogues 
of miracles. 

You remember Owen Glendower and Hotspur in the 
play of " Henry the Fourth." Glendower says — 

At my nativity 
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes, 
Of burning cressets: and at my birth 
The frame and huge foundation of the earth 
Shak'd like a coward. 
Hoi. Why, so it would have done at the same season, if your mother's 
cat had but kittened, though yourself had ne'er been born. 



Scientific Method applied to History. 457 

Ghnd. I say, the earth did shake when I was born. 

Hot. And I say, the earth was not of my mind, 
If you suppose, as fearing 3'ou it shook. 

Gltnd. The heavens were all on fire, the earth did tremble. 

Hot. O, then the earth shook to see the heavens on fire, 
And not in fear of your nativity. 
Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth 
In strange eruptions: oft the teeming earth 
Is with a kind of colic pinch'd and vex'd 
By the imprisoning of unrulj' wind 
Within her womb: which for enlargement striving. 
Shakes the old beldame earth, and topples down 
Steeples and moss-grown towers. At your birth. 
Our grandam earth, having this distempsrature, 
In passion shook. 

Historical facts can only be verified by the skeptical and 
tbe inquiring, and skepticism and inquiry nip like a black 
frost the eager credulity in which legendary biographies 
took their rise. You can watch such stories as they grew 
in the congenial soil of belief. The great saints of the hfth, 
sixth, and seventh centuries, who converted Europe to Chris- 
tianity, were as modest and unpretending as true genuine 
men always are. They claimed no miraculous powers for 
themselves. Miracles might have been worked in the days 
of their fathers. They for their own parts relied on noth- 
ing but the natural powers of persuasion and example. 
Their companions, who knew them personally in life, were 
only a little more extravagant. Miracles and portents vary 
in an inverse ratio with the distance of time. St. Patrick 
is absolutely silent about his own conjuring performances. 
He told his followers, perhaps, that he had been moved 
by his good angel to devote himself to the conversion of 
Ireland. The angel of metaphor becomes in the next gen- 
eration an actual seraph. On a rock in the county of 
Down there is or was a singular mark, representing rudcjly 
the outline of a foot. From that rock, where the you^g 
Patrick was feeding his master's sheep, a writer of ine 
sixth century tells us that the angel Victor sprang back to 
heaven after delivering his message, and left behind him 



458 Scientific Method applied to History. 

the imj^rinted witness of his august visit. Another hundred 
years pass, and legends from Hegesippus are imported into 
the life of the Irish apostle. St. Patrick and the Druid en- 
chanter contend before King Leogaire on Tara Hill, as 
Simon Magus and St. Peter contended before the Em- 
peror Nero. Again, a century, and we are in a world of 
wonders where every human lineament is lost. St. Patrick, 
when a boy of twelve, lights a fire with icicles ; when he 
comes to Ireland he floats thither upon an altar stone which 
Pope Celestine had blessed for him. Pie conjures a Welsh 
marauder into a wolf, makes a goat cry out in the stomach 
of a thief who had stolen him, and restores dead men to life, 
not once or twice, but twenty times. The wonders with 
which the atmosphere is charged gravitate towards the 
largest concrete figure which is moving in the middle of 
them, till at last, as Gibbon says, the sixty-six lives of St. 
Patrick which were extant in the twelfth century must 
have contained at least as many thousand lies. And yet of 
conscious lying there was very little, perhaps nothing at all. 
The biographers wrote in good faith, and were industrious 
collectors of material, only their notions of probability were 
radically different from ours. The more marvelous a story, 
the less credit we give to it ; warned by experience of care- 
lessness, credulity, and fraud, we disbelieve everything for 
which we cannot find contemporary evidence, and from the 
value of that evidence we subtract whatever may be due to 
prevalent opinion or superstition. To the mediajval writer 
the more stupendous the miracle the more likely it was to 
be true ; he believed everything which he could not prove 
to be false, and proof was not external testimony, but inher- 
ent fitness. 

So much for the second period of what is called human 
history. In the first or mythological there is no historical 
groundwork at all. In the next or heroic we have accounts 
of real persons, but handed down to us by writers to whom 
the past was a world of marvels, — whose delight was to 



Scientific Method applied to History. 459 

dwell upon the mighty works -which had been done in the 
old times — whose object was to elevate into superhuman 
proportions the figures of the illustrious men who had dis- 
tinguished themselves as apostles or warriors. They thus 
appear to us like their portraits in stained glass windows, 
represented rather in a transcendental condition of beati- 
tude than in the modest and chequered colors of real life. 
We see them not as they were, but as they appeared to an 
adoring imagination, and in a costume of which we can only 
affirm with certainty that it was never worn by any child 
of Adam on this plain, prosaic earth. For facts as facts 
there is as yet no appreciation ; they are shifted to and 
fro, dropped out of sight, or magnified, or transferred from 
owner to owner, — manipulated to suit or decorate a pre- 
conceived and brilliant idea. We are still in the domain 
of poetry, where the canons of the art require fidelity to 
general principles, and allow free play to fancy in details. 
The virgins of Raphael are no less beautiful as i)aintings, 
no less masterpieces of workmanship, though in no single 
feature either of face or form or costume they resemble 
the historical mother of Christ, or even resemble one 
another. 

At the next stage we pass with the chroniclers into 
history proper. The chronicler is not a poet like his pre- 
decessor. He does not shape out consistent pictures with 
a beginning, a middle, and an end. He is a narrator of 
events, and he connects them together on a chronological 
string. He professes to be relating facts. He is not 
idealizing, he is not singing the praises of the heroes of 
the sword or the crosier — he means to be true in the 
literal and commonplace sense of that ambiguous word. 
And yet in his earlier phases, take him in what part of the 
world we please, — take him in ancient Egypt or Assyria, 
in Greece or in Rome, or in modern Europe, he is but a 
step in advance of his predecessor. He is excellent com- 
pany. He never moralizes, never bores you with philoso- 



460 Scientific MetJiod applied to Historif. 

phy of history or political economy. He never speculates 
about causes. But, on the other hand, he is uncritical. 
He takes unsuspectingly the materials which he finds ready 
to his hand — the national ballads, the romances, and the 
biographies. He transfers to his pages whatever catches 
his fancy. The more picturesque an anecdote the more 
unhesitatingly he writes it down, though in the same pro- 
portion it is the less likely to be authentic. Romulus and 
Remus suckled by the wolf; Curtius jumping into the 
gulf; our Enghsh Alfred spoiling the cakes; or Bruce 
watching the leap of the spider, — stories of this kind he 
relates with the same simplicity with which he records the 
birth in his own day, in some outlandish village, of a child 
with two heads, or the appearance of the sea-serpent, or 
the flying dragon. Thus the chronicle, however charming, 
is often nothing but poetry taken literally and translated 
into prose. It grows, however, and improves insensibly 
with the growth of the nation. Like the drama, it de- 
velops from poor beginnings into the loftiest art, and be- 
comes at last perhaps the very best kind of historical 
writing which has yet been produced. Herodotus and 
Livy, Froissart, and Hall, and Holinshed, are as great in 
their own departments as Sophocles, or Terence, or Shake- 
speare. We are not yet entirely clear of portents and 
prodigies. Superstition clings to us as our shadow, and is 
to be found in the wisest as well as the weakest. The 
Romans, the most practical people that ever lived — a peo- 
ple so preeminently effective that they have printed their 
character indelibly into the constitution of Europe, these 
Romans, at the very time they were making themselves 
the world's masters, allowed themselves to be influenced 
in the most important affairs of state by a want of appetite 
in the sacred chickens, or the color of the entrails of a calf. 
Take him at his best, man is a great fool. It is likely 
enough that we ourselves habitually say and practice things 
which a thousand years hence will seem not a jot less 



Scientific Mtthod aj^plied to History. 461 

absurd. Cato tells us that the Roman augurs could not 
look one another in the face without laughing ; and I have 
heard that bishops in some parts of the world betray some- 
times analogous misgivings. In able and candid minds, 
however, stuff of this kind is tolerably harmless, and was 
never more innocent than in the case of the first great 
historian of Greece. Herodotus was a man of vast natural 
l^owers. Inspired by a splendid subject, and born at the 
most favorable time, he grew to manhood surrounded by 
the heroes of Marathon, and Salamis, and Platoea. The 
wonders of Egypt and Assyria were for the first time 
thrown open to the inspection of strangers. The gloss of 
novelty was not yet worn off, and the impressions falling 
fresh on an eager, cultivated, but essentially simple and 
healthy mind, there were qualities and conditions combined 
which produced one of the most delightful books which 
was ever written. He was an intense patriot ; and he was 
unvexed with theories, political or moral. His philosopliy 
was like Shakespeare's — a calm, intelligent insight into 
human things. He had no views of his own which the 
fortunes of Greece or other countries were to be manipu- 
lated to illustrate. The world as he saw it was a well-made, 
altogether promising and interesting world ; and his object 
was to relate what he had seen and what he had heard and 
learnt faithfully and accurately. His temperament was 
rather believing than skeptical ; but he was not idly credu- 
lous. He can be critical when occasion requires. He 
distinguishes always between what he had seen with his 
own eyes and what others told him. He uses his judgment 
freely, and sets his readers on their guard against uncertain 
evidence. And there is not a book existing which contains 
in the same space so much important truth — truth which 
survives the sharpest test that modern chscoveries can 
apply to it. 

The same may be said in a slightly less degree of Livy 
and of the best of the late European chroniclers ; you have 



'462 Scientific Method applied to History. 

the same freshness, the same vivid perception of external 
life, the same absence of what philosophers call subjectivity 
— the projection into the narrative of the writer's own 
personality, his opinions, thoughts, and theories. 

Still, in all of them, however vivid, however vigorous 
the representation, there is .a vein of fiction largely, and 
perhaps consciously, intermingled. In a modern work of 
history, when a statesman is introduced as making a 
speech, the writer at any rate supposes that such a speech 
was actually made. He has found an account of it some- 
where either in detail or at least in outline or epitome. 
The boldest fiibricator would not venture to introduce an 
entire and complete invention. This was not the case with 
the older authors. Thucydides tells us frankly, that the 
speeches which he interweaves with his narrative were his 
own composition. They were intended as dramatic rep- 
resentations of the opinions of the factions and parties 
with which Greece was divided, and they were assigned to 
this person or to that, as he supposed them to be internally 
suitable. Herodotus had set Thucydides the example, and 
it was universally followed. No speech given by any old 
liistorian can be accepted as literally true unless there is a 
specific intimation to that effect. Deception was neither 
practiced nor pretended. It was a convenient method of 
exhibiting characters and situations, and it *was therefore 
adopted without hesitation or reserve. 

Had the facts of history been like the phenomena of the 
physical world, — had it been possible to approach the 
study of human nature with minds unprejudiced by passion 
or by sentiment, — these venial tendencies to error would 
have soon corrected themselves. There would have been 
nothing to gain by misrepresentation, whether willful or un- 
conscious, and both writers and readers would have learnt 
to prefer truth to fiction. They were far advanced on the 
right road, and they had only to follow out completely the 
method on which they had begun, and imagination would 



Scientific 3Iethod applied to History. 463 

have been reduced to its proper function, of apprehending 
and realizing the varieties of character and circumstances 
on whicli the correct delineation of actions and events de- 
pend. 

Unfortunately nations, like individuals, arrive at a period 
when they become self-conscious. When the boy becomes 
a man he forms theories of what he sees going on around 
him. lie watches the action of principles, and he forms 
principles of his own, by which he tests and condemns those 
of others. The world does not move to his mind ; he would 
have it otherwise. He sighs after the old times, or he as- 
pires after a good time coming, and becomes a revolutionist. 
He no longer j^lays his part simply and unconsciously in the 
scene into which he is thrown ; he reflects and judges, and, 
to the extent of his ability, makes himself a disturbing force. 
Nations in the same way, when they reach a certain j^oint 
of civilization, become, so to say, aware of themselves. 
Hitherto they have lived by habit. They have moved in 
grooves, and when they have been troubled by internal con- 
vulsions, it has been from simple, obvious, and immediate 
causes. 

But with intellectual expansion, habit serves no longer ; 
new ideas, new thoughts, new desires, break upon them ; 
life becomes complicated. Political constitutions are on their 
trial, and sometimes break down. Parties form represent- 
ing opposite principles. Some are for popular forms of 
government, some for aristocratical or monarchical ; some 
are in favor of change or progress ; some look back wistfully 
to a golden age in the past, and are for abiding in the old 
ways. Each sees the history of their country through the 
haze, no longer of imagination, but of jDassion ; and when 
they study its records, it is not to learn, for their minds are 
made up, but to call up witnesses into the historical court 
which shall maintain the truth of their particular opinions. 

From Herodotus to Thucydides the transition is from era 
to era. Herodotus is the sunny, light-hearted, brilliant, in- 



464 Scientific MeiJiod applied to History. 

telligent boy. He had seen liis country rise triumphant out 
of its desperate struggle with Persia ; he had seen open be- 
fore Greece apparently a boundless vista of glory and free- 
dom. When a rare mood of melancholy overtakes him, it 
is but when he meditates on the universal condition of hu- 
manity, or the shortness of life, and the transitoriness of 
earthly things. Two generations had passed away. The 
mind of Athens had sprung out in the maturity of its pow- 
ers, like Pallas from the brain of Zeus. It was the age of 
Sophocles and Aristophanes and Phidias, of Pericles, of 
Socrates, and the Sophists. In that rugged corner of Hellas 
there had appeared suddenly a constellation of the most 
highly gifted men ever seen together on this planet. Never 
at any single time had there been concentrated so much in- 
tellectual activity as in Athens during the seventy years 
which followed the Persian invasion ; and behind it, after a 
brief day of splendor, there had ensued a long and desper- 
ate war, with its train of internal dissensions, political feuds^ 
proscription, anarchy, and ruin. 

Thucydides, through whom the history of that extraordi- 
nary time is chiefly known to us, was on a level with his most 
highly gifted contemporaries ; but the historian who can 
look calmly and impartially at the death-struggle of his own 
country must be more or less than human. The greater his 
nature the more intensely he must feel. Being an aristocrat 
by temperament, Thucydides saw the causes of the fall of 
Athens in the license of an unbridled democracy. He never 
stoops to caricature ; he rarely expresses direct or formal 
censure. In the dramatic form which he employs he stu- 
diously labors to be just. Yet that very form and the ex- 
cellence of his art reveals only the more completely his 
burning contempt for mob government and universal suf- 
frage. We should have learnt but one side of the truth, had 
Lord Clarendon been the only historian of the great Eng- 
lish Rebellion. We do not see the real Athens of Pericles 
in the pages of Thucydides or of Plato. We know what 



Scientific Method applied to History. 465 

Thucydides thought ; but we have not the facts complete 
before us. We have only his opinion about the fticts. 

From Livy to Tacitus there is a precisely analogous 
change. Livy wrote when the civil wars were over, and the 
Roman world, exhausted by bloodshed and anarchy, was 
recovering itself under the dictatorship of Augustus. The 
forms of the Republic were maintained in appearance unim- 
paired. Liberty, which had been so frightfully abused, 
seemed rather suspended than lost. The imjierial system 
was acquiesced in as a temporary expedient, under which 
the wounds could be healed from which the nation was 
bleeding at every pore. Augustus, studiousl}^ simple in his 
personal habits, concealed the reality of a monarchy under 
constitutional disguises. Rome breathed once more ; and 
" the winter of its discontent " was made again into " glori- 
ous summer." But Roman liberty had destroyed itself by 
its own excesses. Despotism was the only form of govern- 
ment which a peo^Dle enervated by self-indulgence was able 
to endure ; and despotism produced its natural fruits in lux- 
ury and tyranny. Emperor followed emperor. Tiberius, 
Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Otho, Vitellius, succeeded one 
after another to the purple, and each added a deeper stain to 
the corruption with which it was soiled. The crimes of the 
Republic were forgotten in the darker crimes of the li^mpire, 
and noble-minded patriots looked back in shame to the aus- 
tere virtues which had made Rome the sovereign of the 
world. Thucydides wrote to expose the vices of Democ- 
racy ; Tacitus, the historian of the Ciesars, to exhibit the 
hatefulness of Imperialism ; and he too, — in himself one of 
the truest of men, — has left behind him a record which, 
grand as it is, cannot be accepted as exhaustive. It is a 
picture of Rome drawn by the hand of a statesman who de- 
tested the Caesars too deeply to do them justice. Circum- 
stances stronger than the wills and caprices of individual 
men had made the Empire a necessity. Tacitus paints only 
the atrocities of it, unrelieved by the fairer results which, 



466 Scientific Method apiMed to Hiatory. 

beyond the conlines of Italy, made it equally a blessing. 
The provinces were never perhaps administered more equi- 
tably than under the infamous Tiberius. To have restored 
the Republic would have redelivered Europe and Asia to 
fresh Mariuses and Syllas, fresh triumvirs, and a fresh pro- 
scription. 

I have spoken of the classical nations, for the history of 
Athens under Pericles, and of Rome under the first Caesars, 
is in fact modern history. The phenomena of every nation 
wliich arrives at maturity are analogous, if not identical. 
Modern Europe, too, lived by habit from the sixth to the 
sixteenth century. The Italian Republics were exceptions, 
and in a less deo-ree the o^reat towns of 'the Low Countries. 
Commercial communities ripen more rapidly, and antedate 
the general progress. But, speaking broadly of England 
and France, Spain and Germany, the feudal system contin- 
ued essentially unimpaired. The speculative movements 
which occasionally disturbed the peace of the Church were 
local, partial, and short-lived. The great masses of the West- 
ern nations believed the same creed, practiced the same de- 
votions, lived generally under similar forms of government. 
There were wars in abundance and civil convulsions, but 
tlie contests were between persons, not between principles ; 
and the historical writers, therefore, during all those centu- 
ries preserve .a uniform type. They pass from the mythic 
to the heroic, from the heroic to the chronicle, but the text- 
ure remains simple throughout. The facts are colored, but 
colored by the imagination only. There is no introspec- 
tion, no sick uncertaint}^, no division of spiritual opinion, or 
collision of political sentiment. 

The Reformation came, and with it, as its cause or its 
consequence, a general dissolution of the organization of 
mediiEval society. The old creeds and the old political con- 
stitutions decayed side by side, and Europe became a chaos 
of conflicting speculations, conflicting principles and inter- 
ests. The imao-inative elements — which had converted 



Scientific Method applied to History. 467 

history into romance — dissolved before the more violent 
emotions with which the mind of mankind was disturbed ; 
but one cause of falsification was removed only to give 
place to another and a worse. Religious differences took 
the lead in the confusion — first, as being the most intensely 
absorbing ; and next, because the clergy had the monopoly 
of culture, and the writing of books fell chiefly into their 
hands. History became the favorite weapon with which 
rival theologians made war on each other. Protestants 
represented medioeval Euroi^e as given over to lies and 
idolatry. Catholics saw in the Church the nursery of 
learning, the champion of the poor, the protectress of order, 
justice, and piety. To one party the Rerformation was the 
struggle of purity and knowledge against barbarous super- 
stition and brutal ferocity ; to the other, it was the outbreak 
of anarchy and lawlessness against a paternal and beneficent 
authority. So wide is the contrast, so different the aspect 
of the same facts as seen from opposite sides, that, even at 
the present hour, it is enough to know that any particular 
writer is a Catholic or a Protestant to be assured before- 
hand of the view which he will take of any one of the prom- 
inent character or incidents of that debated period : an 
Alexander 'the Sixth, a Philip the Second, a Prince of 
Orange, a Luther, a Calvin, a Knox, a suppression of the 
monasteries, or a massacre of St. Bartholomew. A certain 
school of people talk of a science of history. Men of 
science, properly so called, will have a poor opinion of our 
prospects that way till our subject-matter is in a more 
wholesome condition. To Catholic and Protestant suc- 
ceeded in England Anglican and Puritan, Cavalier and 
Roundhead, Tory and Whig, Liberal and Conservative ; and 
one after another they have each made history their pulpit, 
and preached their sermons out of it, on the respective val- 
ues of authority and liberty, faith and reason, religion and 
science, protection and free trade ; with the million minor 
issues which start up on every side in the application pf 



468 Scientific Method applied to History. 

rival principles. Read Macaulay on the condition of the 
English poor before the last century or two, and you won- 
der how they lived at all. Read Cobbett, and I may say 
even Hallara, and you wonder how they endure the contrast 
between their past prosperity and their present misery. 
Sir Archibald Alison, it is said, wrote his thirty volumes to 
prove that Providence is on the side of the Tories. To M. 
Lamartine, the French Revolution was an effort for the in- 
auguration of the millennium ; the European coalition, a 
repetition of the ancient wickedness, when the kings of the 
earth stood up, and the rulers took counsel together, and 
Vergniaud was a hero, and Robespierre the most respecta- 
ble of mankind. 

In our own age, and with matters passing under our own 
eyes, it scarcely fares any better. Witness Victor Hugo on 
Louis Napoleon ; witness Mr. Disraeli on Sir Robert Peel ; 
witness " Blackwood's Magazine " on Mr. Disraeli. We are 
as for as ever from forming impartial judgments, and fticts 
partially stated are not facts at all. Hundreds of books 
have been written on the working of slavery in the South- 
ern States of America. Probably the writers of every one 
of them had formed their conclusions before they looked 
into the facts, and they saw, or imagined, or believed ex- 
actly what fell in with their preconceived opinions. 

An Irish Catholic prelate once told me that to his certain 
knowledge two millions of men, women, and children had 
died in the great famine of 1846. I asked him if he was 
not including those who had emigrated. He repeated that 
over and above the emigration, two millions had actually 
died ; and, added he, " we might assert that every one of 
those deaths lay at the door of the English Government." 

I mentioned this to a distinguished lawyer in Dublin, a 
Protestant. His gray eyes lighted up. He replied : " Did 
he say two millions now — did he ? Why there were not 
a thousand died — there were not five hundred." The 
true number, so far as can be gathered from a comparison 



Scientific Method ajyplied to History/. 469 

of the census of 1841 with the census of 1851, from the 
emigration returns, which were carefully made, and from 
an allowance for the natural rate of increase, was about two 
hundred thousand. 

So much for historical facts and the value of human tes- 
timony. Nor are patriots, or politicians, or divines the 
loosest or the worst manipulators. 

Besides these, and even more troublesome, are the phi- 
losphers, giving us views of history corresponding to the 
theories of which so many have sprung up in these late 
days, purporting to explain the origin and destiny of human 
creatures on this planet. There is the philosophy of the 
German idealists, of which T was once a more ardent 
student than I have been in later years. Hegel was a su- 
premely eminent man, to be spoken of with all possible 
respect. Hegel said, when he was dying, " that after all 
his efforts there was but one man in Germany who under- 
stood what he meant," and then added, as a painful after- 
thought, " and he does not understand me." It is a notice- 
board warning strangers against trespassing on such unin- 
viting premises ; we live in an age when much that is real 
is to be learnt, and when the time to learn it is no longer 
than it used to be. 

Coming nearer home, there is the traditionary and relig- 
ious philosophy of history, of which the present Prime 
jMinister is the latest and most distinguished exponent ; and 
the positive or materialistic associated with the name of M. 
Comte, and more particularly among ourselves with that of 
Mr. Buckle. 

Mr. Gladstone would have us believe that knowledge of 
the most sublime kind — knowledge of the most profound 
moral truths and spiritual mysteries — was divinely im- 
parted to the first parents of mankind. With knowledge 
we presume language was given also, for without language 
ideas cannot be communicated, or even distinctly impressed 
on the mind, — while the history of the different nations 



470 Scientific MetJwd applied to History. 

into which the human race was divided is the history of the 
many-sided corruptions which those ideas underwent. 
Greek mythology is a travesty of the Athanasian Creed ; 
Apollo is a defaced image of the Son of Mary ; and Zeus, 
Poseidon, and Hades are some relation to the Trinity. If 
this view is well founded, it is at any rate an instructive 
commentary on the value of oral tradition for the transmis- 
sion of spiritual truths. 

The materialistic theory is that human creatures, what- 
ever their first beginning, have emerged by extremely slow 
degrees from the condition of animals. All the knowledge 
that they possess has been accumulated by experience. 
Their creeds have been the successive opinions which they 
have formed on themselves and the phenomena surround- 
ing them, and they have developed by natural laws accord- 
ing to the circumstances in which they have been placed — 
soil, climate, local situation, and the thousand other condi- 
tions which affect the human character. 

But for the present I object to all historical theories. I 
object to them as calculated to vitiate the observation of 
facts without which such speculations are not worth the 
paper on which they are written. I said at the beginning 
that neither history, nor any other knowledge, could be 
obtained except by scientific methods. A constructive phi- 
losophy of it, however, is as yet impossible, and for the 
present, and for a long time to come, we shall be confined 
to analysis. First one cause and then another has inter- 
fered from the beginning of time with a correct and authen- 
tic chronicling of events and actions. Superstition, hero- 
worship, ignorance of the laws of probability, religious, 
political, or speculative prejudice, one or other of these has 
tended from the beginning to give us distorted pictures. 
A surface which is perfectly smooth renders back line for 
line the forms reflected in it ; but what kind of notion 
should we have of the full moon and the stars, if we had 
seen nothnior but the imasfe of them on a lake which was 
rii)pled, however faintly, by a breeze ? 



Scientific Method applied to History. 471 

Will it ever be otherwise ? Three times, in Greece, in 
Rome, in modern Europe, the best of the chroniclers have 
made a near approach to being trustworthy. England, 
owing to the form which the Reformation assumed among 
us, was at the outset less fundamentally disturbed than 
France or Germany, and the intellect of the nation ex- 
panded healthily and uniformly to the end of the century. 
The supreme excellence of the Elizabethan literature is in 
its purely objective character ; and the most perfect Eng- 
lish history which exists is to be found, in my opinion, in 
the historical plays of Shakespeare. In these plays, rich as 
they are in fancy and imagination, the main bearings of the 
national story are scrupulously adhered to, and, wherever 
attainable, verbal correctness. Shakespeare's object was to 
exhibit as Mthfully as he possibly could, the exact character 
of the great actors in the national drama — the circum- 
stances which surrounded them, and the motives, internal 
and external, by . which they were influenced. To know 
this is to know all. The reader can form his own theories. 
He may be Yorkist or he may be Lancastrian, rationalist 
or orthodox, a believer in kings and nobles, or in peoples 
and the march of intellect, he will find his own side of the 
matter represented more favorably than he could represent 
it himself. If he admires the shining qualities of courage, 
energy, address, and noble bearing, he has a hero drawn to 
his mind in the conqueror at Agincourt. If his sympathies 
lie with the more retiring qualities of gentleness, humilit}'', 
and devotion, he has all that he desires in the sainted king 
who sat upon the hillside watching the carnage of Towton 
Field, wishing that providence had given him instead of a 
sceptre a shepherd's crook, the sweet shade of the hawthorn 
bush for the embroidered canopy, and had left him fiee 
from mistrust and treason to bring his white hairs to a 
quiet grave. 

No such directness of insight, no such breadth of sympa- 
thy has since been applied to the writing of English history. 



472 Scientific Method applied to Hislory, 

Even Shakespeare himself, perhaps, could not have been 
the man that he was at any other epoch. And Shake- 
speare's attitude towards human life will become again at- 
tainable to us, only when intelligent people can return to 
an agreement on first principles ; when the common-sense 
of the wisest and best among us has superseded the theoriz- 
ing of fiictions and parties ; when the few but all-impor- 
tant truths of our moral condition, which can be certainly 
known, have become the exclusive rule of our judgments 
and actions, and the speculative formulas into which we 
have mapped out the mysterious continents of the spiritual 
world have been consigned to the place already thronged 
with the ghosts of like delusions which have had their day 
and perished. 



THE END. 



k ME\N BOOK BY MAX MULL..R. 

Epflurps on t\^ ^rjpnrp of IHpligion ; 

WITH PAPERS ON BUDDHISM, AND A TRANSLATION OF THE 
DHAMMAPADA, OR PATH OF VIRTUE. 

By F. MAX MULLER, 

Author of " Lectures on the Science of Language," " Chips from a German 
Workshop," &c., &c. i vol. crown 8vo. $3.00. 
These " Lectures on the Science of ReHgion," by this eminent scholar, although they 
attracted wide atte.ntion at the time of their delivery, have never before been produced in 
book form. In connection with them are given a lecture on " Buddhist Nihilism," and a 
translation of the original of the " Dhamrnapada, or Path of Virtue," an important part of 
the Buddhistic canon, togetlier with an introduction explaining its importance. The inter- 
est lately awakened in the Oriental religions gives peculiar value to these contiibutions to 
the literature relating to them, by one who is perhaps more competent to give an account of 
them than any other living scholar. 



Prof. Porter's "Hum ah Intellect" Abridged. 

^fpnipnfs of InfpKIprfual 'JPJJIfosoplg. 

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FROUDE'S SHORT STUDIES. SECOND SERIES. 



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J0WETT8 DIALOGUES OF PLATO. 

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Master of Balliol College, Oxford, and' Regius Professor of Greek. 

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From the New York Tribune. 
The peculiar distinction of Professor Jowett is his eminence as a scholar, especially in 
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CURT I US' GREECE. 



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A fJ EW PHILOLOGICAL "wORK . 

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(34 



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